Summer Farmas made famous by Norman

MacCaig

Interpretation byBen Ingram and Thomas White

Summer Farm (Stanzas 1 & 2)

Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grassAnd hang zigzag on hedges. Green as glassThe water in the horse-trough shines.Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines.

A hen stares at nothing with one eye,Then picks it up. Out of an empty skyA swallow falls and, flickering throughThe barn, dives up again into the dizzy blue.

Summer Farm (Stanzas 3 & 4)I lie, not thinking, in the cool, soft grass,Afraid of where a thought might take me – asThis grasshopper with plated faceUnfolds his legs and finds himself in space.

Self under self, a pile of selves I standThreaded on time, and with metaphysic handLift the farm like a lid and seeFarm within farm, and in the centre, me.

Biographical Information• MacCaig was born in Edinburgh in 1910 and

divided his time, for the rest of his life, betweenhis native city and Assynt in the ScottishHighlands from where his mother’s family camefrom.

• He was schooled at the Royal High School andstudied classics at the University of Edinburgh.

• During World War II MacCaig registered as aconscientious objector, a move that many at thetime criticised.

• For the early part of his working life, he wasemployed as a school teacher in primaryschools.

• His first collection, Far Cry, was published in1943. He continued to publish throughout hislifetime and was extremely prolific in theamount that he produced.

• In 1967 he was appointed Fellow in CreativeWriting at Edinburgh. He became a reader inpoetry in 1970, at the University of Stirling.

Metaphysics

• Metaphysics is the branch of philosophyinvestigating principles of realitytranscending those of any particular science.It is concerned with explaining the ultimatenature of being and the world.

• It relates to questions that cannot beanswered in factual terms. i.e. science maytell us how the universe works, but why itexists is a metaphysical question.

Analysis• In the first stanza MacCaig examines the world around

him. While this examination can be viewed as a meredescription of a setting for the poem, it also speaks forthe thought process of the narrator (MacCaig). Heconsiders the vast scale of the world but also its detailand preciseness.

• This random preciseness “hang zigzag” “nine ducks gowobbling by in two straight lines” leads the narrator intometaphysical thought and the next stanza, as hequestions, why?

• The second stanza contains dual meaning. Onemeaning is a continuation of the description of settingand the observation of the world around MacCaig.

• The second meaning looks at how MacCaig’sobservation leads him into deep thought. The swallowis used as a metaphor of his thought, free to roamthrough the “sky”. As the “hen stares at nothing withone eye”, so does the narrator gaze at hissurroundings absent-mindedly. “A swallow falls”,suddenly a thought comes to him “out of an emptysky” and he gains a flicker of understanding oremotion as the thought is “flickering through the barn”before it “dives up again into the dizzy blue” and heloses his train of thought. The word dizzy conveys asense of confusion afterwards.

• The third stanza is the beginning of a change of focusin the poem. Until now MacCaig has focused hisattention on those things outside of him and he nowredirects his thought toward himself. This change isimmediately denoted by the use of “I”

• MacCaig shows fear at the idea ofcontemplating something that we cannotunderstand and not knowing what thoughts itwill lead him to. The prospect ofmetaphysical thought: trying to make senseof an idea that cannot be solved in a logicalway is daunting.

• MacCaig’s conscious now leaves him, in afigurative sense, so as to better see himself,or try and view himself objectively. Thegrasshopper, representing MacCaig’sconscious, “unfolds his legs”, jumps free ofhimself. “Finding himself in space” refers tohis conscious being above himself as helooks down upon the world and himselfwithin the farm.

• “Self under self, a pile of selves I standthreaded on time” is a portrayal of theidea that he (his perception of things) isjust the now, there is also versions(different perceptions) of himself in thepast and the future, the “pile of selves…threaded on time”.

• The “metaphysic hand” is his mindreaching out and looking beyond thefarm, lifting “the farm like a lid”, andseeing the past and future of the farm aswell as his own as they are intertwined inthe present.

• What he sees when he lifts the farm isdescribed in the last line, “farm withinfarm, and in the centre, me”. This showsthat like himself, there are more farms inthe past and future and that he is in thecentre.

• Overall, this illustrates the metaphysicalidea that we are just the now, there isalso the infinite nature of the past andpresent which we can imagine or considerbut not understand.

• Further interpretations that can be taken from the laststanza are that in removing his conscious fromhimself and conceiving the idea of his perspectivechanging over time he “brings discontinuity andinstability to the self” and has “wrenched it both fromits original contemplative and fusional unity with theworld and from its eternal self-sufficient wholeness,into an agonising and lonely consciousness of itself”

• This sense of multiple selves changing over timemeans that “the self as such no longer appears as theenduring core substance of the personality, but anextremely problematic concept which can never befully comprehended but only glimpsed”

• This sense of loss of identity is the consequence ofhis metaphysical thought which he was so afraid of instanza 3.

• “Having bypassed the objective reality of theworld around him, the subject is now caughtup in the contemplation of himself.” The useof the subjective pronoun “I” in the latter partof the poem changes to the objective “me”.MacCaig ends up “naming and pinpointinghimself at the cost of losing his own truth” inan attempt to gain an illusive image ofhimself. “For the subject cannot (or must not)be objectified nor be studied in an objectiveway”

• The “I” in the poem rhyming with the “eye” inthe second stanza indicating that it is theconscious viewing “me” the object thatMacCaig is trying to “see” which is also arhyme.

Poetic Devices/Techniques• MacCaig uses two similes in the first stanza to

create a detailed image in our minds as to whathe is seeing. “Straws like tame lightnings” createsthe image of the sharp crooked nature of lightningreflected in a less extreme, “tame”, way by thestraw.

• The second simile, “green as glass”, is a strangeone as one would not normally consider glass tobe green. However MacCaig’s use of this phrasevivifies the idea that the water is still and calmwithout having to say so.

• MacCaig also uses the alliteration of like,lightnings and lie in the first stanza. Asmentioned earlier, this creates a calm feelingby slowing down the reader

• The first line of the second stanza endsunfinished, the rest of the sentence is thebeginning of the second line, “then picks itup”. This emphasises the idea of picking itup, of having a thought, as mentioned earlier.

• The hen in this stanza also acts as ametaphor for people and the way they think

• The rest of the second stanza is written withcommas so as to separate out the swallow’sjourney into three pieces, a pause betweeneach. By splitting up the journey it furtherreflects the idea it represents, that of thought.

• The calm state of mind is furtheremphasised in the third stanza. MacCaiguses commas to slow down the reader andthe long vowel sound in cool to create thiseffect

• The second line of the stanza leaves ushanging on the dash (-) as we considerwhere the poem is leading us just asMacCaig ponders where his thoughts mighttake him.

• The dash then serves as a link to the restof the stanza to compare the way thegrasshopper is jumping to the way thenarrator is “afraid of where a thoughtmight take” them, “in space”.

• MacCaig’s use of animals in metaphors todescribe human thought is ironicconsidering that animals are consideredincapable of deep thought, especiallychickens and insects. In this wayMacCaig suggests that humans are butanimals in the face of the mysteries of theuniverse.

• In the fourth stanza MacCaig usescommas to slow down the reader andmake them think about what they arereading.

• This is most obvious in the last line of thestanza and poem which is split up intothree parts, each of which builds up themain idea.

• MacCaig uses the simile lifting “the farmlike a lid” with a “metaphysic hand”. Themetaphysic hand is his mind lookingbeyond the farm now and seeing whatwas and what will be.

• Summer Farm has an obvious rhymescheme of AABB CCDD AEFF GGHH.The AE lines may have been intended torhyme, but the break in the rhymescheme leads to a noticed change thatplaces emphasis on this line.

• There appears to be no specific meterwhich ties to the idea that the poem is astream of consciousness.

In Conclusion…

• It’s just downright trippy