Analysis of 'Summer Farm' Poem: Metaphysical Exploration of Self and Reality, Exercises of Creative writing

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Summer Farm

as made famous by Norman

MacCaig

Interpretation by

Ben Ingram and Thomas White

Summer Farm (Stanzas 1 & 2) Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass And hang zigzag on hedges. Green as glass The 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 sky A swallow falls and, flickering through The barn, dives up again into the dizzy blue.

Biographical Information

• MacCaig was born in Edinburgh in 1910 and divided his time, for the rest of his life, between his native city and Assynt in the Scottish Highlands from where his mother’s family came from.
• He was schooled at the Royal High School and studied classics at the University of Edinburgh.
• During World War II MacCaig registered as a conscientious objector, a move that many at the time criticised.

• For the early part of his working life, he was employed as a school teacher in primary schools.
• His first collection, Far Cry , was published in
  1943. He continued to publish throughout his lifetime and was extremely prolific in the amount that he produced.
• In 1967 he was appointed Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh. He became a reader in poetry in 1970, at the University of Stirling.

Analysis

• In the first stanza MacCaig examines the world around him. While this examination can be viewed as a mere description of a setting for the poem, it also speaks for the thought process of the narrator (MacCaig). He considers the vast scale of the world but also its detail and preciseness.
• This random preciseness “hang zigzag” “nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines” leads the narrator into metaphysical thought and the next stanza, as he questions, why?
• The second stanza contains dual meaning. One meaning is a continuation of the description of setting

• The second meaning looks at how MacCaig’s observation leads him into deep thought. The swallow is used as a metaphor of his thought, free to roam through the “sky”. As the “hen stares at nothing with one eye”, so does the narrator gaze at his surroundings absent-mindedly. “A swallow falls”, suddenly a thought comes to him “out of an empty sky” and he gains a flicker of understanding or emotion as the thought is “flickering through the barn” before it “dives up again into the dizzy blue” and he loses his train of thought. The word dizzy conveys a sense of confusion afterwards.
• The third stanza is the beginning of a change of focus in the poem. Until now MacCaig has focused his attention on those things outside of him and he now redirects his thought toward himself. This change is immediately denoted by the use of “I”

• “Self under self, a pile of selves I stand

threaded on time” is a portrayal of the

idea that he (his perception of things) is

just the now, there is also versions

(different perceptions) of himself in the

past and the future, the “pile of selves…

threaded on time”.

• The “metaphysic hand” is his mind

reaching out and looking beyond the

farm, lifting “the farm like a lid”, and

seeing the past and future of the farm as

well as his own as they are intertwined in

the present.

• What he sees when he lifts the farm is

described in the last line, “farm within

farm, and in the centre, me”. This shows

that like himself, there are more farms in

the past and future and that he is in the

centre.

• Overall, this illustrates the metaphysical

idea that we are just the now, there is

also the infinite nature of the past and

present which we can imagine or consider

but not understand.

• “Having bypassed the objective reality of the world around him, the subject is now caught up in the contemplation of himself.” The use of the subjective pronoun “I” in the latter part of the poem changes to the objective “me”. MacCaig ends up “naming and pinpointing himself at the cost of losing his own truth” in an attempt to gain an illusive image of himself. “For the subject cannot (or must not) be objectified nor be studied in an objective way”
• The “I” in the poem rhyming with the “eye” in the second stanza indicating that it is the conscious viewing “me” the object that MacCaig is trying to “see” which is also a rhyme.

Poetic Devices/Techniques

• MacCaig uses two similes in the first stanza to create a detailed image in our minds as to what he is seeing. “Straws like tame lightnings” creates the image of the sharp crooked nature of lightning reflected in a less extreme, “tame”, way by the straw.
• The second simile, “green as glass”, is a strange one as one would not normally consider glass to be green. However MacCaig’s use of this phrase vivifies the idea that the water is still and calm without having to say so.

• The rest of the second stanza is written with commas so as to separate out the swallow’s journey into three pieces, a pause between each. By splitting up the journey it further reflects the idea it represents, that of thought.
• The calm state of mind is further emphasised in the third stanza. MacCaig uses commas to slow down the reader and the long vowel sound in cool to create this effect
• The second line of the stanza leaves us hanging on the dash (-) as we consider where the poem is leading us just as MacCaig ponders where his thoughts might take him.

• The dash then serves as a link to the rest

of the stanza to compare the way the

grasshopper is jumping to the way the

narrator is “afraid of where a thought

might take” them, “in space”.

• MacCaig’s use of animals in metaphors to

describe human thought is ironic

considering that animals are considered

incapable of deep thought, especially

chickens and insects. In this way

MacCaig suggests that humans are but

animals in the face of the mysteries of the

universe.

• Summer Farm has an obvious rhyme

scheme of AABB CCDD AEFF GGHH.

The AE lines may have been intended to

rhyme, but the break in the rhyme

scheme leads to a noticed change that

places emphasis on this line.

• There appears to be no specific meter

which ties to the idea that the poem is a

stream of consciousness.

In Conclusion…

• It’s just downright trippy