[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 am surprised, appalled even, at your comments on Donaghy. Four present or former moderators here, Gwynn, Murphy, Lake, and Evans-Bush, have published elegies for our esteemed friend, whose death is not recent, having occured 63 months ago. The fall of 2004 was an awful time for poetry, as Thom Gunn, Tony Hecht, Don Justice, Virginia Hamilton Adair, and Fred Morgan all died. The worst loss, though, was Mikey's because unlike the aforementioned, he did not die in the ripeness of his years but long before his time. I find nothing difficult or show-offish about Michael's work. Did you ever see him perform? It was amazing, all from memory, with impeccable timing and delivery.

[David Mason]

FYI, the next Dark Horse will contain my essay in defense of Donaghy. I wonder if my case will change any minds.

[Adam Elgar]

De gustibus, Tim. I don't think his ability as a performer has any relevance to the quality of his writing. though it's true that ordinary poetry can seem exceptional when well performed. The point I'm making about my dislike of his writing is partly that it's so much a performance. There's much too much "aren't I clever!" for my taste. Certainly his memory was remarkable, and I envy that.

Overall, I suspect that his reputation will settle down, and the current tendency to hyperbole will look a bit embarrassing in a few years. Sean O'Brien and John Kinsella are putting him on a level with Browning - Browning!.