Measures

by Norman MacCaig

56 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1965

About the author

MacCaig was born in Edinburgh and divided his time, for the rest of his life, between his native city and Assynt in the Scottish Highlands. He registered as a conscientious objector during World War II. In 1967 he was appointed Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh. He became a reader in poetry in 1970, at the University of Stirling.

Reviews

[Boy Blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the weakest collection of his I've read so far. Some of the poems seemed to really fight the structure they'd been forced into.

There are moments of brilliance but fewer and farther between.


Strangely, this is 3 years after A Round of Applause and 10 years after his first proper collection Riding Lights, but feels like it could have been written before.

Favourites were Harris, East side, Likenesses, Heron, No Accident, and True Ways of Knowing.

The word Bourgeois appeared 3 times in this one collection which for me is 3 times too many. Although I suppose in the 60's it was quite a sophisticated and edgy word. I've also noticed a leaning on the use of oily in describing the sea which I'm not enjoying.

Sometimes I feel MacCaig really shines in simplicity. Such as at the start of:

Likenesses
It comes to mind,
Where there is room enough, that water goes
Between tall mountains and between small toes.

Or, if I like,
When the sun rises, his first light explores
Under high clouds and underneath low doors.

And sometimes his rhyming sings such as the first stanza of Heron

It stands in water, wrapped in heron. It makes
An absolute exclusion of everything else
By disappearing in itself, yet is the presence
Of hidden pools and secret, reedy lakes.
It twirls small fish from the bright water flakes.

or the last stanza.

Until, releasing its own spring, it fills
The air with heron, finds its height and goes,
A spear between two clouds. A cliff receives it
And it is gargoyle. All around it hills
Stand in the sea; wind from a brown sail spills.

Other times it's lumpy and forced but we don't need examples of that.