Alexander Linklater > Quotes

“MacDiarmid's words were composed, to a startling degree, out of words that had, indeed, been written before. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle does not go as far as the copy-and-paste collages of his later work in English, but his great Scots poem is nevertheless made up of lines that are routinely borrowed or extracted, quoted or adapted, compiled or found or lifted: from Burns, Child, Wordsworth, Nietzsche, Shestov, Blok, Dostoevsky, H.G. Wells, A.R. Orage, Sachervell Sitwell...”
― Alexander Linklater, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'