"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"
About this Quote
MacCaig speaks as a teacher who discovers the limits of instruction. The image of handing a propeller to a bird is comically wrong-headed: a bird already possesses everything it needs to fly, and bolting a machine onto it would only hinder its grace. So with a young person who already has poetry in them. The essential gift is internal and organic, a way of seeing and sounding the world that cannot be engineered from the outside. Too much guidance, too many rules, even too much praise, can overmechanize a natural motion. The teacher’s desire to help, to add power and control, may secretly betray a lack of trust in the student’s instinct and a forgetting that poetry begins in attention and wonder, not in technique.
The line comes from a poet renowned for clarity and humility, whose work attends to birds, fish, stones, and the ordinary miracle of things. MacCaig spent years among students and knew the classroom’s temptations: to prescribe, to correct, to package inspiration as a method. His confession that he learned something marks a shift from authority to stewardship. Instead of forcing propulsion, the wise mentor steps back, creates space, removes obstacles, and perhaps points to currents and thermals the bird can use. Teaching becomes a matter of encouragement and example rather than intrusion.
The metaphor does not dismiss craft. Even a bird must learn wind, balance, and timing. But such learning refines an innate capacity; it does not replace it with machinery. MacCaig affirms that the deepest engine of poetry is interior, a temperament and attentiveness that cannot be installed from outside. When present, the best help is often restraint. When absent, no propeller will suffice. The lesson is an ethics of teaching and art: trust what is alive, nurture lightly, and honor the natural flight of a voice finding its own air.
The line comes from a poet renowned for clarity and humility, whose work attends to birds, fish, stones, and the ordinary miracle of things. MacCaig spent years among students and knew the classroom’s temptations: to prescribe, to correct, to package inspiration as a method. His confession that he learned something marks a shift from authority to stewardship. Instead of forcing propulsion, the wise mentor steps back, creates space, removes obstacles, and perhaps points to currents and thermals the bird can use. Teaching becomes a matter of encouragement and example rather than intrusion.
The metaphor does not dismiss craft. Even a bird must learn wind, balance, and timing. But such learning refines an innate capacity; it does not replace it with machinery. MacCaig affirms that the deepest engine of poetry is interior, a temperament and attentiveness that cannot be installed from outside. When present, the best help is often restraint. When absent, no propeller will suffice. The lesson is an ethics of teaching and art: trust what is alive, nurture lightly, and honor the natural flight of a voice finding its own air.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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