Rachael Annand Taylor, "The Princess of Scotland"
1. What are aspects of the poem's form, rhythm and word choices? How do these contribute to its effect?
2. Who is "Poverty"? How do you interpret the poem? Does the poem offer a social critique?
3. What elements of the poem do you find effective?
Bessie MacArthur, "The Collady-Stane"
1. Why do you think the author chooses a quartz stone as an image of truth? What are important features of the image?
2. Describe the poem's stanza form and sequence of thought. Does it progress?
3. How does the poem's diction reinforce its subject? What final point does the poem make?
Naomi Mitchison, "Remembering 1926"
1. How would you characterize the poem's point of view and audience? Does the speaker's position shift, and if so, what effect does this have on the reader?
2. The poem describes an incident in the General Strike of 1926. This began with a miners' strike after a lockout following a labor dispute, and broadened into a strike by several million workers. On what grounds does Mitchinson's speaker argue for sympathy with the eight men accused of plotting to cause a trainwreck?
3. How do rhythm and word choice reinforce the author's narration? Why does the speaker list the names of the accused? What is the poem's sequence of presentation?
4. What purpose is served by its concluding peroration? Is this an effecitve poem on its subject? Any contemporary relevance?
Christopher Grieves (Hugh MacDiarmid), "The Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" (see also under MacDiarmid)
Selections from the Faber Book of Twentieth Century Poetry:
What is important about the metaphor of the thistle? Apart from the reference to Scotland, which of its features will be useful to the poet? Why the reference to drunkenness?
How would you describe the poem's form? (poetic sequence) What is appropriate about its metrics? What role is served by comic juxtapositions and the unexpected?
Reportedly Macdiarmid used a Scots dictionary to create his poem. What seems the intention behind piling up so many dialect words at once? (a created Scottish language, as it were, evoking origins and distinctiveness) Are there emotions which seem to evoke different registers of speech?
lines 101-44: What do you make of the reference to tumbling onto a hill? Is this a literary echo? And may the name Jean have significance? (Burns' love was Jean)
In the first section, what does the poet claim is his purpose in writing the poem? (to remind him that he isn't always right, as a natural human illusion can prompt one to believe) Which aspects of his ruminations/thoughts would seem related to this aim? (meditates on how small a part human life is within the grand cycles of fate)
What "hard wark" is sought by the poet? ("haud'n by a thocht worth ha'en'") Are all capable to this?
What happens when an ideal is codified into an institution or conventional practice? (an empty name) What examples does he give, and why are these representative? (the Church, Burns Clubs as the promoters of Scottish culture)
What are ironies associated with the attempted transmission of history? (people project their own ideas onto the past, distorting it into its opposite)
Would the advent of a greater Christ or Burns help the human race? (may change people's words but not their natures)
What must be the purview of the democratic poet? (must like the pig feed from the common trough, "In wi' your gruntle then, puir wheengin's saul")
What mistakes does he claim not to make? (doesn't believe he can condense it all into a tiny space; is aware that his identity consists of the non-rational as well as the rational, knows he doesn't have all the certainties)
How will he avoid the mistake of claiming certitudes? (will seek extremes) Will the wheel be a good metaphor for this perception?
lines 477-512 [Man and the Infinite]
What is the special mission of Scotland? (to unite man and the infinite)
What has been the history of the thistle? (growth in man's heart, is reborn as phoenix in paradise) At what point does he directly address the reader, and with what aim? (to lay hold of his heart and feel its energy leaping over the stars)
What allusion is contained in the statement, "The howes o' Man's hert are bare, / The Dragon's left them for good"? What is its message?
lines 612-35: [O Wha's the Bride?]
What are implications of the image of the unfaithful bride who carries a bouquet of white thistles? (she represents the timelessness of fate, nothing can be new) What can she offer her mate? (kindness, help, sex, oblivion to his own mortality)
lines 636-43: [Repetition Complex]
What is the message of this passage? (futility of repeated births) What can the poet predict for the future? (can't know if there will be another as great as Christ) What is added by the poet's direct address to the women? (humor) What does he describe as their attitude toward this difficult role? (eager and willing)
lines 644-51: [The Problem Child]
How did Christ's death differ from that of other children? What is the point Macdiarmid seeks to make with this contrast? (unromanticized infancy is difficult, "Wi' bellythraw, ripples, and worm-i'-the-cheek!"]
lines 1219-30: [The Thistle's Characteristics]
Which of the poet's thoughts don't seem to flower? (reflections on Christ and his death) What are these associated with in his mind? (the peculiar dourness of Scottish Calvinism--"a' the four provincial thocht/That merks hte Scottish breed").
Are these traits of Scottish Presbyterianism contested? (no, everyone agrees, "To argie there's nae need.) Is there hope of deliverance for Scotland? (who knows?) What is humorous about the poet's wording? (question form, characterization of Scotland's religion as a "vile growth"--another plant allusion)
lines 1334-60:
What remains puzzling for the poet? What are some metaphors/allusions associated with the thistle in its various forms? (flight of swallows, swarm of midges, plague of moths, stars, bright hive, miserable week, tree of universe, dried herring)
What are ironies in his statement that if he were sober he would think the thistle/its associated thoughts resembled drunken imaginings? (his visions are true whatever his state)
Why does he feel hemmed in by his mother's womb? From what is he seeking to be freed? (cycle of mortality) What does he seek? (selfhood--the cycles of birth and death inhibit any true differentiation and identity)
Why do you think the figure of Christ remains so prominent in this sequence? (still a role model for the attempt to break free of pattern)
lines 1451-1548: [part of A Stick-nest in Ygdrasil]
What is Ygdrasil and what is our part in it? (we are small twigs in the great tree of life, held by compulsion) What happens as one gains knowledge? (realizes how little he knows, experiences greater confusion)
What are implications of the metaphor of the straw scattered from an abandoned nest? Of the wisp of straw which cannot stand close to the trunk of destiny? What will be our fate? (to become skeletons in the earth as coral insects become reefs)
What is the relationship between the tree and the thistle? (tree is only a giant thistle, disintegrating human imaginings) Why cannot we discover its purpose? (we are destined to be a part of it, cannot avoid our fate) What will be the result of human intelligence? (will seem a monkey's joke, allusion to Darwin)
What inferior tastes indicate the trivial nature of humans? (many prefer a dog fight and peep show to the sublime fight between Jacob and the Angel--fought to strengthen Jacob for his divinely appointed task) To what does he compare his thoughts? (a star viewed in a puddle, his wild thoughts the result of Eve's convoluted intestines)
lines 2216-35 [Farewell to Dostoevski]
What is the poet's relationship to Dostoevsky? Is it important that his affinity crosses a language barrier? Why may this particular European author have inspired Macdiarmid with a sense of kinship?
What does the poet feel he has in common with the Russian novelist? (both are wandering in the void) What separates them? (the wind and language) What metaphor describes their hearts? (roofless fireplaces)
What element of hope arises in this bleak landscape? (the thistle grows even in the snow) What does it include? (incorporates all the preceding generations)
Throughout the sequence to which progenitors or fellow writers does Macdiarmid allude? (Dostoevsky, Burns, Shakespeare) Does the poem contain any references to specific women? (mythological figure, Ariadne) How does this contrast with Macdiarmid's references to men? (men are specific, women are generalized)
lines 2482-2529 [part of The Great Wheel]
What is this Great Wheel? What is needed for his verse to be of value? (must join with the purpose which has created the Wheel)
What philosophical or evolutionary views of the time would these sentiments echo? Is this section as hopeless as those which have preceded it? (no, the wheel may bring hope for humanity, the wheel may spin out an answer for human needs)
If the Great Wheel can provide no certain truth or divinity, what can it provide? (a glory in the place, enlightenment) What will this enlightenment protect him from? (sense of "horror o' the endless Fate/ A'thing's whirled in predestinate.")
What does he wish for his vision of Scotland? (that it move from its own place to encompass a vision of the whole earth and time) What will this vision of the whole yield? (he who sees the infinite can then for the first time see Scotland clearly, and its place in the whole)
lines 2614-46 [part of The Great Wheel]
What is added to this section by the rhymed triplets?
What humorously worded criticisms does Macdiarmid make of his fellow Scots? (--They ca' their obstinacy "Hame") What do they continue to wish to do? (to be a thorn in the world's side, provocateurs)
What do their fellow countrymen think of their fellow Scots who express original ideas? (--Sic traitors are nae langer Scots!) How do such invectives aid the turning of the Great Wheel? (extremes produce reaction)
What hope does the poet take from all this? (his efforts are needed to "assume / The burden of his people's doom) In what way does he become a Christ figure? (must die to break his people's living tomb)
Why have other writers who have tried failed? (are impaled on the thistle, too parochial) What for the true poet must be the way out? (must lose one's one particular Scottish nationality to see the whole)
Is this an ironic conclusion for a poetic sequence which meditates on Scottish identity?
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Does this sequence progress, and if so, what is its sequence of thought?
What are some elements of humor, and how are these related to the poem's main themes? (use of comically exaggerated invective or flytings, shifts from one extreme to another, piling on of unusual and little-used and quaint words, especially polysyllabic ones)
Can one see reflections of Macdiarmid's Scots nationalism or his Communist allegiances in this poem? (references to subject matter of ordinary Scots life; preoccupation with improving Scottish cultural life)
What attitude toward religion, and in particular, the Scottish national religion, Presbyterianism, is conveyed? Why does the figure of Christ appear so frequently?
Faced with the constraints of fate, what is the sole resource left to the modern poet? (must attempt to enlighten his fellow human beings) Has the poet achieved this goal? (understanding his place on the Great Wheel enables him to make the effort, enlightenment is a process of reaching out and upwards, of placing one's origins in perspective)
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Does this sequence progress, and if so, what is its sequence of thought?
What are some elements of humor, and how are these related to the poem's main themes? (use of comically exaggerated invective or flytings, shifts from one extreme to another, piling on of unusual and little-used and quaint words, especially polysyllabic ones)
Can one see reflections of Macdiarmid's Scots nationalism or his Communist allegiances in this poem? (references to subject matter of ordinary Scots life; preoccupation with improving Scottish cultural life)
What attitude toward religion, and in particular, the Scottish national religion, Presbyterianism, is conveyed? Why does the figure of Christ appear so frequently?
Faced with the constraints of fate, what is the sole resource left to the modern poet? (must attempt to enlighten his fellow human beings) Has the poet achieved this goal? (understanding his place on the Great Wheel enables him to make the effort, enlightenment is a process of reaching out and upwards, of placing one's origins in perspective)
How would you compare with other major modernist poems that attempt to evoke the spirit of a culture, such as Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" or T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" or "Four Quartets"?
"First Hymn to Lenin"
What are some of this poem's more audacious claims? What famous men of his day does the poet mention? (Churchill, Locker-Lampson, Beaverbrook)
What new sight are we now able to face with the aid of this new movement? (can see entire human race) What will bring about a better future? (resolve of all the people, "the crood")
Can you think of other poems published in the British Isles with a similarly praiseful view of specific Communist revolutionaries? Is it significant that this poem was written before the advent of Stalin?