Life & Wisdom Quote by Norman MacCaig

MacCaig’s line snaps shut on the velvet box we like to keep around “Poetry.” It’s a small, wicked joke with a serious point: the moment poetry becomes an abstract noun, it turns into someone else’s problem. “I never think about poetry” reads like anti-intellectual bravado until he adds the kicker - “except when I’m writing it. I mean my poetry” - and suddenly the target isn’t craft so much as the pieties that collect around craft.

The intent is to demystify without devaluing. MacCaig isn’t denying labor; he’s denying the posture of the poet as full-time oracle, forever “thinking about poetry” in a fog of theory. The possessive “my” is doing heavy work. It’s both modest (I can only answer for my own practice) and territorial (poetry is made, not contemplated; it belongs to the maker in the act of making). Subtext: stop asking poets to be priests of the art form. Ask them to write.

Context matters: MacCaig’s reputation rests on clarity, precision, and a dry Scottish skepticism toward grand claims. In a 20th-century scene where “Poetry” could become an academic industry - workshops, manifestos, critical fashions - his quip is a refusal to confuse commentary with creation. The line also protects attention: the poem demands presence, but only at the point of composition. Everything else is noise, and MacCaig is too disciplined, and too funny, to pretend otherwise.