A drunk man looks at the thistle,

Rating:
Summary: Largely neglected, the great long poem of the 20th c.
Review: MacDiarmid's magnum opus begins in a bar. The opening lines, translated from the Scots dialect the poem is written in, go: "I'm not so much drunk as just dead tired; it's hard work upending glass after glass after glass. . . ."

The story: the speaker, drunk and trying to make his way home from the bar at the end of the night, falls down on a hilltop and rolls under a thistle bush, where he lies staring up at the moon and considering everything from Burns to Schoenberg to what his wife will say when he finally gets home. And what an adventure it is, alternately (and sometimes all at once) hilarious, moving, and profound, all the way up to the poem's mock-Hamlet ending: "Oh, I have silence left!"

"And well you might,/Or so Jean will say/After such a night."

No one who loves poetry should miss this incredible performance by MacDiarmid.