Ace after ace after ace.(The Poems of Norman MacCaig)(Book Review)

The Poems of Norman MacCaig, edited by Ewen McCaig; Polygon, 2005, about $90.

 
   In the evening the talking was hushed 
   while Ishbel sang without trembling 
   a sad sad song of exile 
   from the island where she was born. 
   The anguish and the beauty of the song 
   were one. How can that be? 
   Then more talk, more laughter, 
   more singing in that room 
   full of "the marriage of true minds". 
   But what I remember, so long after, 
   are the two other marriages--of 
   the anguish and the beauty, 
   of the singer and the song. 

THIS POEM, called "Highland Ceilidh", and written in March 1989, is one of 101 previously uncollected poems included in this new edition of Norman MacCaig's work. Perhaps the Shakespearean allusion is an unexpected touch, but the weighed-out economy, the alignment of descriptive statement and question, and the undertow of emotion, are all utterly characteristic of a late MacCaig poem.

When Norman MacCaig died in 1996, aged eighty-six, closely followed by his exact contemporary, the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, a bridge disappeared which had joined an earlier generation of Scottish writers--Hugh MacDiarmid, Neil Gunn, Edwin Muir, all born in the nineteenth century--and a younger generation of poets--Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan, George Mackay Brown, all born in the 1920s.

Although his mother was a native Gaelic speaker (her English apparently never became entirely reliable) and he had a fierce regard for his Highland heritage, and he was a lifelong friend of MacDiarmid, the dogmatic propagandist for Scots, MacCaig showed no interest in writing in any language but standard English. This use of English was seen by some Nationalist Scots as an act of betrayal, but his defiance is made clear in a little squib he wrote in the late 1960s called "Patriot":

 
   My only country 
   is six feet high 
   and whether I love it or not 
   I'll die 
   for its independence. 

Indeed, the influences detectable in his verse are, apart from the English Metaphysicals, mainly American (Wallace Stevens and later William Carlos Williams) and East European poets of the twentieth century.