Scottish - Poet | November 14, 1910 - January 23, 1996
It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.
Norman MacCaig
MeSomeoneConversationPersonOut
There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.
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A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.
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And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.
PoetryYouNothingWillGotThem
And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.
GreatMeHelpSometimesWayPoet
And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.
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And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.
GoodEyesStartThinkingBetterBad
And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
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However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.
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I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.
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I don't think of myself all the time.
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I find it's impossible for me to read Proust.
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