Norman MacCaig's "Visiting Hour" | How to Analyse Poetry

To kickstart the new year, we've prepared 6 poetry revision videos which cover the Norman MacCaig poems set for the first part of the critical reading paper of the SQA's Nat 5 and Higher English exams. The first poem in this series is "Visiting Hour".
Norman MacCaig playlist: • Norman MacCaig | How t...
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[@FalseyTycoonNews]

This is all immensely helpful with me Scottish prelims at the moment, understanding the poems much more after watching these videos and taking notes and annotations down, thanks muchly

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Glad you found them useful - hope the exams are going well :-) Good luck!

[@TheWinterer]

My English exam is today and I'm going to college this year so this will (hopefully) be the last time I watch your videos for assistance, and I'd like to thank you, you're analyses have been a big help in studying for my exams both this year and last year, especially as someone who finds it difficult to focus on things like poems and writing

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Thank you for taking the time to comment and hope the exam went well for you. :-)

[@hayls_s]

watching these over and over again before my english prelim tomorrow

[@Aaron-lg3hz]

this helped for 2024 exam 🙏🙏

[@TheLearningCauldron]

So pleased you found the video helpful - thank you for taking the time to let us know :-) Good luck for results day!

[@bubblydiamond6815]

such a good annotation! great help

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Thanks for your kind comment. Wishing you heaps of luck in the exams! 🙂

[@willsilcock3398]

just watched this in my english class! great episode. thank you

[@tomgarry1641]

ok
.

[@Montagrus]

Thanks!

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Thanks for taking the time to say thanks :-) Hope you found the video helpful and good luck with the prelims :-)

[@Montagrus]

it was very helpful Thanks again

[@lilrice1373]

Exam tomorrow

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Good luck!

[@triplesevenpunkstar]

did you pass

[@jesst6038]

@@triplesevenpunkstar We'll never know :/

[@cjrenwick2809]

What other norman maccaig poem would you say this is relatable to?

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Hi Calum, You could relate VH to several of the other poems (though in different ways). For example, if you wanted another poem that also deals with (facing) loss, you could relate it to Aunt Julia. If you wanted another poem that dealt with the poet's personal experience, you could relate it to Aunt Julia, Hotel Room 12th Floor and Basking Shark. If you wanted another poem that looks at suffering, you could use Assisi (the dwarf is definitely suffering) and the violence in both New York poems. For the theme of isolation, you could compare it to Assisi, Aunt Julia, and Hotel Room 12th Floor. Moving on to technique-based 10-marker questions, if you were asked for other poems that use structure effectively to explore theme, you could use Aunt Julia (imagery of the bucket and the wind and the seagull; themes - lack of communication, loss) or Assisi (imagery of the sack , the ruined temple and the child's voice; themes - the hypocrisy of the church, isolation, poverty/disability) or Basking Shark (imagery of the 'monster', the spring and the sail; themes - man in nature, evolution) or Hotel Room 12th Floor (imagery of the insect, the dentist's drill, Midnight, Wild West; theme - civilised vs uncivilised behaviour, isolation). If you're asked about use of structure, other good choices to compare with Visiting Hour (repetition, sentence length and enjambment) would be Aunt Julia (repetition/parallel structure and enjambment) and Basking Shark (5 x triplets, use of rhetorical question). Hope that helps!

[@mattyhgames4034]

Pipe it

[@Nabiruuu]

exam tomorrow tyy

[@jkheyy]

We got this 💪💪

[@joshuaware2415]

You guys think this coming up tomorrow?

[@jkheyy]

@@joshuaware2415 I think so! Or basking shark maybe (hopefully not)..! Lets hope the 10 marker is good🙏

[@joshuaware2415]

@@jkheyy good luck

[@jkheyy]

@@joshuaware2415 GOOD LUCK!!

[@lewis5518]

Prelim on Monday

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Hope it went well! Even if you found it challenging, just remember that you've three whole months before the real exam, so plenty of time to make changes :-)

[@jackcunningham4820]

I have 2 questions:
Do we know what illness his wife has? I always thought it was Alzheimer’s due to the ‘clumsily’ ‘dizzily’ and ‘forgetfulness’
Is “growing fainter” an oxymoron?

[@TheLearningCauldron]

Hi there, Jack. Thanks for your questions. I'll try to answer them as best I can: 1. In the final stanza, it is as if MacCaig is imagining what his wife sees as he gets up and leaves at the end of the visiting hour. So he is the one who 'clumsily rises' and 'dizzily goes off'. This is because he is confused and upset by the emotional experience of seeing his loved one in such poor health, and he is worried he is going to lose her. 2. The oxymoron at the end of the poem is "fruitless fruits", as this seems to be contradictory. How can something be a fruit but be fruitless, and if something is fruitless then surely it isn't a fruit. This phrase is used to emphasise his feeling that the whole visit has been a waste of time. In a literal sense, he has possibly brought her fruit as a gift (as visitors to patients often do), but she's on a drip and unlikely to be able to eat it, so that is pointless, just as his visit has been futile because he couldn't help her or take away her pain. Hope this helps. K

[@TheLearningCauldron]

I don't know what illness his wife had - he doesn't specifically mention the patient as being his wife in the poem (just referring to her as "she"), so I'd probably just refer to a loved one, whom critics believe to be his wife, or something along those lines, when writing about her.

[@jackcunningham4820]

The Learning Cauldron thanks for responding, your answers helped a lot, thanks :)

[@TheLearningCauldron]

@@jackcunningham4820 No probs - good luck for your prelim :-)

[@darn_8869]

Harry Kane is the goat