[Maryann Corbett]

I just stumbled (belatedly) on the news that Don Paterson has won the Queen's Medal in Poetry for his recent book Rain. What I know of Paterson's work is sonnets and other forms--and I like it tremendously--so I wondered how much of the new book is formal.

I've been able to find the title poem online:

"Rain"

and it looks exciting and encouraging.

Just found another one: "Two Trees"

What else from the book is out there? Has anyone here read it? I see now that it apparently hasn't yet been released in the US. What about our UK contingent?

[Adam Elgar]

Coincidentally, I've just been re-reading Landing Light, and trying to persuade myself to like it more than I did first time - and failing. I like it less. In general, I find it hard to like the facile couplets he's so fond of. They make me wish I was reading Pope - which isn't an easy thing to make me want.

Still, he's better than his late chum, Michael Donaghy, who I really can't stand. And he wrote a beautiful essay about prosody in Poetry Review a while back. For me, he's like Zadie Smith - better at writing about his art than doing it.

[Maryann Corbett]

Now those are intriguing reactions, Adam, especially as regards Donaghy. I'll have to hunt around and add links later, but I know there's stuff on these boards that expresses quite favorable opinions of him, particularly of his posthumous collected and his essays.

My own reaction to D. is mixed, and I've assumed the fault was mine and it marked me as a Reader of Very Little Brain--sometimes Donaghy is just difficult. But would you say more about which poems don't satisfy you and why?

And I mean either Paterson or Donaghy or both.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, I have Rain. I am a big Paterson fan, as I said recently elsewhere in this forum prompting John W to remind me that he was just as sexy and had more hair.

I think a problem with getting famous and receiving awards (if such can be called "problem") is that the reader will often expect every poem to be a little masterpiece, one that will reach out from the page and touch him/her deeply. No book of poetry that can do that with every poem, alas.

I have Rain beside my sofa and reach for it now and then to read or re-read a poem at a time. My favorite (I think, at least so far) is Sky Song (after Robert Desnos): it is one of those poems that successfully seduce women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Desnos

I think D.P. is a woman's poet. Ruth Padel says in one of her crit books that every time she used one of his poems in her column, she got lots of fan mail from women/girls asking for more by him. This was a pretty long time ago--he was younger then and writing the kind of poetry young men write and that young women fall for. I suspect he had more hair then too (not that I see any correlation between hair-lush poets and sexy poetry).

That said, many of the poems in Rain are acknowledgements to the poets that D.P. admires. I like that idea--standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before, esteeming one's peers.

Crossposted with M.C.

[Adam Elgar]

Yes, that sexiness thing - a bit of a mystery. The poem RP refers to is "Imperial" about deflowering a virgin. As a would-be fair-minded male, I find it hard to swallow the idea that a poem beginning thus -

Is it normal to get this wet? Baby, I'm frightened -
I covered her mouth with my own -

is sexy. Ditto the close, where the "flag of surrender" (a white sheet) is replaced by "the flag of Japan" (a bloodstain on the white sheet).

But then young women find DH Lawrence sexy. Not my middle-aged job to know why, I suspect.

Both Paterson and Donaghy are tricksy poets - very clever and inventive. The oddest thing for me, in relation to D's recent death, is the outpouring of grief for D not just as an artist but as a much-loved man. I find the personality expressed in his poetry thoroughly rebarbative. Sean O'Brien, a big big fan, calls him a poet of "good faith" - to me he's precisely the opposite. Compare our own outpouring for Margaret Griffiths - don't we think she is the real thing? I find her work much much better, and much more expressive of a delightful nature, than anything written by either of these blokes. Or O'Brien - a bit of a charlatan, I think. Certainly a glib over-producer.

That kind of poet really winds me up.

Ruth Padel, on the other hand - she's great, though her Darwin book was published too soon, I think. Maybe I just prefer poetry by women!

[Janice D. Soderling]

It includes two poets I admire, Carole Satyamurti and Judy Gahagan

"Let us now praise women / with feet glass slippers wouldn't fit" CS

Ah, Adam, your comment is the sort of thing that turns me inside out and makes me enviously ask myself "why didn't you go on to London from Stockholm?" OK, I know the answers, but still..

Aren't they lucky to have you and aren't you lucky to have them!

"Baby, I'm frightened" is, I think, a very young poet's voice. Though much anthologized, I find the poem part and parcel of the romanticized "God's Gift to Women" perspective that young male writers/poets often have of themselves and (hopefully) grow out of. I admit that my appreciation of that poem was not immediate--I initially found it off-putting, and my current appreciation is not for the content but for the take it gives on the human psyche--or parts thereof. Or maybe it just reminds me of "Poets I Have Known". A fan has many blades.

[Adam Elgar]

Yes, knowing CS is great. But living in Bristol can feel as remote from London as Stockholm, especially in these Arctic-oscillation-induced snowy times. We've just cancelled next Sunday's meeting since yet more snow is promised.

I'll bet travelling from Uppsala to the capital is easy, even in this deep winter. We just don't have enough experience of the white stuff. Minus 15 degrees last night -- in the drizzle capital of England.

[Tim Murphy]

Adam, I owe you an apology, and it is tendered.

[Rory Waterman]

I actually reviewed Rain for Agenda, though I'd rather none of you read it, as it is rickety and contains at least one horrible error ('always not' for 'not always'. Ouch). I think Rain is a very fine book, though I wish Paterson's poems didn't so frequently have a tendency to withdraw at the last minute. The title poem is a good example. It is beautifully written, starts with a punch or ten, but boils down to a vague and disappointing nothing ('And none of this, none of this, matters', or something like that). A little masterpiece pedestrianised. Some of the poems are masterful, though. 'The Swing', for example, or 'Two Trees'. And the Donaghy sequence is one of the most powerful 'new' poems I've read in a long time. He's less good when he tries to be too clever, or abstruse. I'm not sure what some of his poems mean and they don't make me want to work them out. The blank poem is a little too papery for my tastes. Actually, when you know who it is about even that wins you over.

I think God's Gift to Women was one of the first poetry books I bought at the time it came out. I was about sixteen. I've lapped up Paterson's books ever since, and always felt the same burning admiration tinged with irritation. Yes, he knows how to win prizes. A friend of mine was one of his MA students at St Andrews. Apparently Paterson is the most ruthlessly motivated and driven individual he's ever met. When I saw him give a reading a few months ago he was charming, but read very badly at about six decibels. A fairly severe cold certainly didn't help him. Still, he stuck it out and so did we.

As for the rhymes and metrical quirks and kinks: the only more famous poetical Dundonian is, of course, a certain William McGonagall. And I think he (er, Paterson) is a fine critic. I love the essay in his sonnet anthology, though I presume some here would disagree about his definition of what counts as a sonnet.

Rory

[Maryann Corbett]

Sometimes, by sheer dumb luck and not knowing enough to be timid, I manage to ask a question that gets people flashing insights around in the wildest ways. I lucked out this time, and I have to express my gratitude.

But don't let this stop you!