Visiting Hour by Norman MacCaig Essay Example for Free

Visiting Hour by Norman MacCaig Essay I have chosen to write about the poem Visiting Hour by Norman MacCaig. The poem is about a hospital visit to someone close to his heart. The poet believes that the person, who incidentally is his wife, is going to die. From the poem I can sense that Norman MacCaig is speaking through his emotions and by writing the poem he is aiming to release some of his emotional pain. The poem had a profound impact on me. I felt very empathetic towards him because I also feel that when someone close to me is about to die. When both my Gran and Grandpa have been severely ill in hospital, I have feared the worst and saw myself being strong whilst in the company of others, but naturally breaking down into a sob of tears when alone. When reading the poem I could clearly visualise going to visit someone in hospital and I started to cry as I read the poem more. I feel that being strong for someone is very important in this poem and he shows this throughout. The poem was written is six paragraphs of which only two were long. The first four paragraphs are about MacCaig building up to the visit t his wife and what he is thinking. In paragraph three he says, I will not feel, by this he means he doesnt want to show his emotions in front of his wife. I think that the poem was divided into two halves, the shorter first four paragraphs being one half and they longer two paragraphs being the second half. In the second half, MacCaig writes about the visit itself. I think he does this to get an equal balance of importance, too gradually lead us up to his heartache. MacCaig uses a lot of unusual ideas in his poem. When he is describing walking into the hospital he writes this, The hospital smell combs my nostrils, by this he is telling us that the hospital smells so clean, that his nostrils would feel out of place if they hadnt been combed. It seems as if his mind is set on death as he sees someone on a hospital trolley being trundled into a lift and going up words, he writes, What seems a corpse is trundled into am lift and vanishes heavenward, to me this signifies that he is seeing a negative in everything. I was confused by the way he described a nurses movement at first as he says, Nurses walk lightly, swiftly, here and up and down and there, and by this he means that a nurse sets to go somewhere and can end up somewhere completely different because of demanding patients or unexpected urgencies. I admire the poets style of writing because it is very moving. By this I mean I can feel empathy towards him throughout the poem.