Commentary on Summer Farm

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By Daniel Siwecki By Daniel Siwecki Commentary on “Summer Farm” written by Norman MacCaig MacCaig uses his poem summer farm in an attempt to teach of a new way for mankind to see themselves, the world and their place within it. He attempts to teach the reader of a new view of the world through describing the idyllic scenery of the summer farm, through using vivid imagery and complex metaphors to allow the reader to realise a truth. MacCaig begins through describing the scene in third person, as if the narrator is present but is existing and witnessing this in a state of transcendence, with no reference to self or involvement in existence in any way what so ever. While existing in this state of a free or transcendent mind as MacCaig is able to exist in his surroundings without any sense of physical being or existence within a mind that is created through past experience of immanence and provision for the future that confines the majority of mankind preventing us from being able to “lie about the grass” and witness the beauty of the world fully as each moment is created before our eyes with us being made a new too rather than “staring at nothing with one eye” and constantly living in either our memory of the past or our plans for the future, never truly focused and immersed in the world that will only ever exist in all of time once and that can never be created again; much like our lives we are but a “swallow that falls out of an empty sky, flickers through the barn and then dives up again into the dizzy blue”. MacCaig learns of the potential of mankind to experience vivid existence within every moment of life as he sees the “straws like tame lightning lie about the grass” from this metaphor like people these straws live their lives “lying about the grass” as “tame lightning” never truly achieving their powerful potential for life as they remain “tame” and
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