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" Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood. "
Norman MacCaig
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Anybody
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" But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person. "
Norman MacCaig
You
Seem
Find
" Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thump. And that's not the only reason. "
Norman MacCaig
Fish
Love
Fly
" But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true! "
Norman MacCaig
Love
Think
Nice
" 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
Like
Conversation
Someone
" I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century. "
Norman MacCaig
Great
Great Love
Last
" 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. "
Norman MacCaig
Years
Way
Sometimes
" I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry. "
Norman MacCaig
Powers
Invention
Also
" I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that. "
Norman MacCaig
Border
Rivers
Stand
" I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out. "
Norman MacCaig
Books
Much
Keep
" All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about. "
Norman MacCaig
More
People
Write
" People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share. "
Norman MacCaig
Long
Share
Days
" 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. "
Norman MacCaig
Bad
Thinking
Eyes
" I don't think of myself all the time. "
Norman MacCaig
Myself
Time
Think
" I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry. "
Norman MacCaig
Writing
Mean
Never
" 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. "
Norman MacCaig
Lucky
Feel
You
" If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex. "
Norman MacCaig
Single
Play
Sex
" When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man. "
Norman MacCaig
Man
Think
Always
" And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so. "
Norman MacCaig
Question
Taught
Think
" Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away. "
Norman MacCaig
Well
Things
Light
" I find it's impossible for me to read Proust. "
Norman MacCaig
Impossible
Find
Me
" I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now. "
Norman MacCaig
Poetry
American
Less
" All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed. "
Norman MacCaig
Fishing
Poetry
You
" When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books. "
Norman MacCaig
Classroom
Nothing
Teacher
" I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense. "
Norman MacCaig
Book
Natural
First
" 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. "
Norman MacCaig
Lost
Years
Dying
" When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous. "
Norman MacCaig
Teach
You
Poetry
" In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry. "
Norman MacCaig
Think
Doing
Me
" And it's impossible for me to read Henry James. "
Norman MacCaig
Henry
Impossible
James
" 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. "
Norman MacCaig
Help
Bird
Thought
" When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me. "
Norman MacCaig
Nobody
Like
Know