This selection explores the diversity of Hugh MacDiarmid's work, from delicate lyrics derived from the Scots ballad tradition to fierce polemic. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle and On a Raised Beach - with a full glossary of its technical terms -are included, as are glossed Scots words at the foot of each page and an illuminating memoir by MacDiarmid's son, Michael Grieve. Scotland's great modernist poet (1892-1978) was a writer of enormous vitality and contradictions: an ardent Communist and Scots nationalist, philosophical materialist and metaphysical idealist, creator of earthily blunt Scots poetry and interminable poems of prosy, prolix pontification in English. The selection here includes too much dross in addition to the gold, but at least the Scots masterpiece "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" is printed in full. Some of MacDiarmid's more disciplined efforts are full of life and wit, but the passages from most of his long, later poems are, as he himself put it, "but chopped-up prose." Skipping over dated paeans to Lenin and the proletariat, one finds much of value in the man who knew that "He canna Scotland see what yet/ Canna see the Infinite,/ And Scotland in true scale to it."-- Frank J. Lepkowski, Oakland Univ., Rochester, Mich. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. 1. Ah, Joyce, This Is Our Task And A Poetry In Which As In Film And All This Here, Everything I Write, Of Course And Thus A Poetry Which Fully Understands Another Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries; Reply To Housman As Lovers Do At My Father's Grave At The Cenotaph Au Clair De La Lune Bagpipe Music The Bonnie Broukit Bairn Bracken Hills In Autumn But Shairly, Shairly, There Maun Be The Caledonian Antisyzygy The Celtic Genius Cheville Conception Constantly Rendering Service Credo Crowdieknowe Crystals Like Blood Direadh Iii A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle The Dying Earth Dytiscus The Eemis-stane Empty Vessel Everlasting Layers Ex Vermibus Facing The Chair First Love Focherty The Fool Fred Astaire Gairmscoile Glasgow, 1960 The Glass Of Pure Water The Glen Of Silence Great Art Has Inspired Action Great Music The Greatest Poets Undergo A Kind Of Crisis In Their Art Happy On Heimaey Harry Semen Hokum Hope Of Achieving Ere Very Long I Dream Of Poems Like The Bread-knife I Mind When My First Wife Died I Rejoiced When From Wales Once Again I Sing Of Cornwall Imperialism In The Children's Hospital In The Slums Of Glasgow The Innumerable Christ Interests And Relationships Island Funeral It Is Possible That A Change May Come John Maclean (1879-1923) A Last Song (withered Wreaths) Left-wing Poetry Represents A Rise In The Price Of Bread Light And Shadow The Little White Rose; To John Gawsworth Lo! A Child Is Born Lourd On My Hert The Love-sick Lass Major Road Ahead Milk-wort And Bog Cotton A Moment In Eternuty; To George Ogilvie My Love Is To The Light Of Lights My Songs Are Kandym In The Waste Land Never For A Moment Forgets Norman Maccaig O Ease My Spirit Of John Davidson Of My First Love Old Wife In High Spirits; In An Edinburgh Pub On A Raised Beach; To James H. Whyte On The Ocean Floor One Loves The Temporal, Some Unique Manifestation One Of The Principal Causes Of War Perfect; On The Western Seaboard Of South Uist Poems Spoken In Factories And Fields Poetry And Science A Poetry Full Of Cynghanedd, And Hair-triggered Relationships A Poetry Like A Barrel Of A Gun A Poetry Like A Lance At Rest A Poetry Like The Character Of Indian Culture Poetry Of Integration A Poetry That Goes All The Way A Poetry The Quality Of Which Problems Of Value The Realm Of Music The Ross-shire Hills The Sauchs In The Reuch Heuch Hauch Scotland Scunner The Seamless Garment Servant Girl's Bed Skald's Death The Skeleton Of The Future; At Lenin's Tomb Sounds Of The Sea Stony Limits (in Memoriam: Charles Doughty, 1843-1926) Think Not That I Forget A Single Pang To A Friend And Fellow-poet To Distinctly English Writers In England To Hell Wi' Happiness! To My Friend The Late Beatrice Hastings True Language Of Thoughts Two Memories The Two Parents A Vision Of Scotland Water Of Life The Watergaw We Have The Privilege - Or The Great Misfortune To Be Present The Weapon Well Hung What A Pool Wheesht, Wheesht, My Foolish Hert. Why The Wind-bags; Gildermorie, November 1920 With The Herring Fishers Woman The Wreck Of The Swan A Poetry That Goes All The Way The Dead Liebknecht -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® Used Book in Good Condition