Rhythm as Spiritual Pursuit in the Poetry of George Mackay Brown

Abstract

According to the Scottish poet George Mackay Brown (1921–1996), pattern is what makes a poem a reflection of the “divine order”. It follows that a writer who pursues spiritual truth should “impose” it on “the endless flux”—by which he means not only reality but also, presumably, the speaking voice’s most intimate rhythm. The purpose of this essay is to try and show that, seen in those terms, the project is a fantasy. Indeed, pattern and rhythm appear to be interlocked in a complex dialectic from which neither one can emerge the “winner” but which ultimately gets resolved into what Brown himself defines as “pattern-within-flux”.

Keywords

• G. Mackay Brown
• dialectic
• divine order
• fantasy
• flux
• pattern