Work
Brown's poetry and prose have been described as characterised by "the absence of frills and decoration;the lean simplicity of description, colour shape and action reduced to essentials, which heightens the reality of the thing observed. While "his poems became informed by a unique voice that was his alone, controlled and dispassionate, which allowed every word to play its part in the narrative scheme of the unfolding poem".
Mackay Brown gained most of his inspiration from his native islands, in poems, stories and novels which ranged through time. He drew on the Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, especially in his novel Magnus. Seamus Heaney said that passed everything "through the eye of the needle of Orkney".
Read more about this topic: George Mackay Brown
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation—but I’m working on the foundation.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“To do his work well a workman must first sharpen his tools.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that’s the angels’ pasture; they are happy; they don’t have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)