Nevertheless, MacLean read widely and was influenced by poets from a variety of styles and eras. Of contemporary poets, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats had the greatest impact. After reading "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" by MacDiarmid, MacLean decided to try his hand at extended narrative poetry, resulting in the unfinished "An Cuilthionn". He was also influenced by the Metaphysical school. However, he disdained the popular left-wing poets of the 1930s, such as W. H. Auden or Stephen Spender, and sometimes regarded poetry as a useless aesthetic hobby.