Aging & Wisdom Quote by Norman MacCaig

The line lands with the clean, dry assurance of a poet who’s spent a lifetime watching institutions try to “improve” what they barely understand. MacCaig’s image is deliberately lopsided: a propeller is an impressive piece of human engineering, but a bird already has the one thing that matters. The metaphor isn’t anti-teaching so much as anti-interference. It punctures the educator’s ego - the comforting fantasy that talent is waiting for an expert to bolt on the missing parts.

MacCaig’s intent is to defend an older, less marketable idea of creativity: that it begins as an internal, self-propelling force, and the most “helpful” adult move can be getting out of the way. The subtext is sharper. “Offering help” isn’t neutral; it often arrives wrapped in expectations, technique, and tasteful little cages. A propeller doesn’t just fail to help a bird fly - it suggests the bird’s flight is insufficient unless it resembles a machine’s. That’s how education can drift from opening doors to standardizing souls.

Context matters. MacCaig, a Scottish poet who also taught, knew the classroom’s double bind: students need attention and encouragement, but the poetic impulse can be skittish, easily trained into silence or performance. The bird-propeller gag is a warning against over-instrumentalizing art - treating poetry as a skill set to be optimized rather than a way of sensing the world. His wit carries a practical ethic: offer conditions, not machinery; space, not blueprints.