Rain

by Don Paterson

In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning Landing Light, Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct. In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, he conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and to offer some protection against them. Whether outwardly elemental in their address or more personal in their direction, these poems—addressed to the rain and the sea, to his young sons or beloved friends—never shy from their inquiry into truth and lie, embracing everything in scope from the rangy narrative to the tiny renku. Rain, which includes the winner of this year’s Forward Prize for the Best Individual Poem and an extended elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy, is Paterson’s most intimate and manifest collection to date.

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century, British Literature

61 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2009

About the author

Don Paterson (b. 1963) is a Scottish poet and writer. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism, memoir and poetic theory. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, three Forward Prizes, the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador MacMillan. He has long had a parallel career as a jazz guitarist.

He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we had never left this room
the wind would be a ghost to us.
We wouldn't know to read the storm
into the havoc in the glass

but only see each other bough and leaf
driven by its own blind will:
the tree, a woman mad with grief,
the bush, a panicked silver shoal.

Something hurries on its course
outside every human head
and no one knows its shape or force
but the unborn and the dead;

so for all that we are one machine
ploughing through the sea and gale
I know your impulse and design
no better than the keel the sail —

when you lift your hand or tongue
what is it moves to make you move?
What hurricanes light you along,
O my fire-born, time-thrown love?

[Inga Pizāne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ak, dzeju ir tik grūti vērtēt. Dzeja ir vairāk par 5 zvaigznēm. Dzeja ir debesis. Reizēm zvaigznes var redzēt, citreiz priekšā mākonis. Kāds dzejolis uzrunā līdz poētiskiem sirds dziļumiem, cits – mazāk, bet kopumā šis dzejas krājums ir ļoti manā gaumē, piemēram: "As the bird is to the air and the whale is to the sea
so man is to his dream"

[Rob the Obscure · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like ALL of these poems. But I liked most of them, and some of them just left me arrested.

Paterson still uses rhyme, still uses form, much in a somewhat traditional way. But he is using it to express feelings and insights that are brutally honest.

Please read this. The poem "Rain" finishes the book, and the finish to the poem is simply brilliant.

"Phantom", about his friend Michael D., is simply stunning.

Please read.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d previously read Paterson’s 40 Sonnets, in 2015. This collection is in memoriam of the late poet Michael Donaghy, the subject of the late multi-part “Phantom.” There are a couple of poems in Scots and a sequence of seven nature-infused ones designated as being “after” poets from Li Po to Robert Desnos. Several appear to express concern for a son. There’s a haiku-like rhythm to the short stanzas of “Renku: My Last Thirty-Five Deaths.” I didn’t understand why “Unfold i.m. Akira Yoshizawa” was a blank page until I looked him up and learned that he was a famous origamist. The title poem closes the collection:

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone

I liked individual passages or images but didn’t find much of a connecting theme behind Paterson’s disparate interests.

Another favourite passage:

So I collect the dull things of the day
in which I see some possibility
[…]
I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night.

(from “Why Do You Stay Up So Late?”)

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Tristan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating 2.5 (rounded down out of frustration)

This is the second book in as many weeks that I seriously considered giving gave fewer than three stars to. I was going to settle on three stars because I did like the poem "The Lie", or--perhaps more accurately--found there to be something interesting in the poem "The Lie". This poem took a really interesting topic as its center, showing the speaker sneaking about "to make sure that everything was in order with The Lie", a being that lives in his house and is imprisoned:

He was a boy of maybe three or four.
His straps and chains were all the things he wore.
Knowing I could make him no reply
I took the gag before he could say more

and put it back as tight as it could tie
and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

I didn't give it three stars because while I was returning to this, the only poem I found at all interesting or musical, I remembered just how disappointed I was in it. It is such a good premise, and the closing line is perfect, but on the whole, the rhyme seems forced and over-powering, like the rhyme is more important that what he is actually saying with the poem. This sense pervaded the book, making the already dull poems of the rest of it not just less than inspiring, but rather doggerel. Paterson seems to be more than willing to sacrifice content on the high altar of form, but does nothing interesting with the worship of his chosen god. Instead, the poems display simple, regular, rhyme schemes that do nothing to impress in isolation. I will be avoiding his work in the future.

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paterson is at his most mellow and accessible here. Nevertheless, no chit chat or beatific love poetry in this collection. Rain is patterned with grand philosophical questions. The feeling of cosmic forlornness that pervades the earlier work is there. The poet makes grim fun of our human hubris, the risible failings of our cognitive faculties and our delusional desire for control over a nature that does quite well without this meddlesome human species, thank you. One of the poems I love to revisit is ‚The Bathysphere’ in which a worn-out contraption for deep-sea exploration is swept up by biospheric élan vital. But find out for yourself. There’s much more to enjoy in this collection.

„As the wind a leaf across the floor,
so time moved me. Now close the door.”

[g026r · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit too fond of platitude, and a bit too formalist in structure (particularly with regards rhyme scheme, where he shows a strong love of rhyming couplets that most frequently works, in my opinion, to the poems' detriment). A handful of enjoyable works, but overall not to my taste.

And, as a computer person, the Forward Prize-winning "Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze" was simply painful.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zen Larkin. A formalist with a bit of a ladish streak. Sometimes very beautiful.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Don Paterson's earlier collection, Landing Light, when I first heard him read in 2005. So I was eager to dive into this latest volume of poems in forms that range from sonnet to haiku, poems in Scots dialect, and poems adapted from Spanish, French and Chinese (among others). Here, again, are the pliable rhythms and the searing intellect I've learned to expect from Paterson, this time in a darker key. This volume is loaded with elegy and metaphysical anxiety in the tradition of Larkin's "Aubade." It's sad and sobering and steady. And really quite beautiful. I especially like some of the longer poems, but here's a short translation I'm fond of:

The Bowl-Maker

(after Cavafy)

On this wine-bowl beaten from the purest silver,
made for Herakleides' white-walled home
where everything declares his perfect taste —
I've placed a flowering olive and a river,
and at its heart, a beautiful young man
who will let water cool his naked foot
forever. O memory: I prayed to you
that I might make his face just as it was.
What a labour that turned out to be.
He fell in Lydia fifteen years ago.

[Minna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some real absolute gems in here, favourites even, but not a complete love.

[David S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as music goes, everyone believes that there is a perfect LP, tape, CD (if you don't know what any of these are, you should be whipped with a limp noodle). A collection of music that is perfection from start to finish:

AC/DC - Let There Be Rock (my personal fav)
The Beatles - Revolver
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors

Don Paterson's collection RAIN is the most perfect ensemble of poetry ever collected. This is my "Let There Be Rock" of the literary world. Not a poem that doesn't belong; and, better yet, isn't warranted. I've already read all these poems (at least twice), and, like a great album, I will revisit individual poems or the whole collection at multiple dates.

Highest Recommendation

5 Let There Be Stars

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful: sincere, grotesque, solemn and shrugging; both elemental and goofy. Rhymes are delivered straight. Going by the ambient temperature and the coverage of light, Paterson lives very near to outer space.

so for all that we are one machine
ploughing through the sea and gale
I know your impulse and design
no better than the keel the sail

A unique, dry view of family life here; sneaking downstairs so as not to disturb them with your inexplicable angst.
There's even a painfully goofy evocation of the mating call of the Wire magazine reader:

Though I should confess that at times I find your habit of maxxing
the range with those bat-scaring frequencies ring-modulated
sine-bursts and the more distressing psychoacoustic properties
of phase inversion in the sub-bass frequencies somewhat taxing
you are nonetheless beautiful as the mighty Boards
themselves in your shameless organicising of the code.

Which is best read as a scherzo. Half of it's written for a dead friend or in homage to lesser-known world poets; I rarely get poems like that. I don't know why I'm cavilling; this is the best collection I've read since... the last Don Paterson. Sentimental by his standards but bruising by poetry in general's. Teetering upright.

[Mark Foulkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no doubt this is a great collection of poems. It deals with the big questions about existence, the human condition and the difficulties with perception. Despite its philosophical range the poems still maintain warmth and humour and a human scale.
My two favourite pieces in the book are the poem 'The Bathysphere'..which conjures up the idea of a man who buys a second-hand (and as it turns out, very well-used) underwater craft and sits in it for two years on dry land, and 'Song For Natalie Beridse' which deals with the author's mild obsession with a Georgian musician with self-deprecating humour and warmth.

[Rui Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written with traditional rhyme patterns & free verse style. Somewhat melancholic since a number of the poems appear to be about the death of a son and the final set of poems about the death of the poet, Michael Donaghy, a friend of Paterson. A couple of pieces are in Scottish brogue but easy to decipher, especially with vocabulary at the bottom of the page of one poem. Fairly easy to comprehend upon a second reading of each poem. Several translations of various poets add flair and style to this short book. Paterson seems a witty fellow with much appeal.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Characteristics of this book, that, in mentioning, I second: end-rhymes (Paterson is far more regular at this); combination of standard captitalization/punctuation and none; narrative poems; subjective personae; theme (multiple poems about rain, and a concept of rain); poems about concept of mind. He breaks out of form in "Song for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze,' and a series of loose renku. There are also translations.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

really wonderful, quizzical, graceful, dark but with a light touch...

unlike much other modern poetry I've read but in a very original way...

If you're looking for a new European (Scottish) poet to discover, you could do much, much worse than to spend an afternoon reading him (it won't be just an afternoon, either)

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I figured out who Michael Donaghy was, much more of this book opened up for me. I was reminded of Lovecraft, of Frost, of Yeats, Muldoon, Heaney...and none of them. Paterson just does it. He puts his eye to the window and does not blink at the darkness. He opens the bathysphere and does not drown in the shadows, or the inevitable rising. I wonder if he will rust.

[Gunita Zaube · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent poems, emotional and philosophical. It's a joy to read them.

My favourite poems in this collection - "The Story of the Blue Flower", "Why do you stay up so late?", "Sky Song" and "The Landscape".

[Kate Dempsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this again after seeing him at Poetry Now Festival. Lovely, clever perfectly worded poems.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite was 'The Day'

[Michael Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good (really good) collection but I still feel like I'm missing something with Paterson. I never feel like I fully appreciate him like I should.

[Carla]

Some gems in this collection, especially the final poem.

[J.S. Watts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rain is an interesting poetry collection, but I didn’t connect with it the way I connected with Landing Light. I read Rain because I liked Patterson’s Landing Light so much. Unfortunately, for me, Rain was something of an anti-climax.

It is a collection of lyric poems and monologues, most of them traditionally rhythmic and rhyming, which summon up charms, fables and memories with which to explore the world. Because I draw on fable, myth and memory in my own writing, I was doubly attracted to the book, but many of the poems left me cold.

Poems that did work for me were the moving “The Swing” with its exploration of loss and loneliness through the erection of a swing for surviving children and the lighter, but no less intense, explanation of poetry “Why Do You Stay Up So Late?”

The poems that spoke to me most were the ones written in the style of, as a translation of, in homage to others. There was some clever, condensed poetry in this part of the book, which highlighted my lack of connection to some of the earlier poems written in Patterson’s own voice. Having said that, I particularly liked the lengthy Phantom with its evocation of memory, loss and finality. Patterson’s use of imagery, here, was put to stunning and dark effect.

The poems that made this book soar for me made it worth buying, but there was much in this collection, that, for whatever reason, I failed to engage with.

[Jacky Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought Rain on a rainy day when I was a lonely fresher and finished it on a rainy day when arguably I was no longer a fresher, but still perhaps lonely. Don Paterson's poetry is like rain itself, gentle, poignant, leaving traces of light within our empty hearts.

we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain's own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

I will not forget Paterson and his paternal love, reminding his son Jamie (and indeed all of us, for the reader is under the patronage of the poet, if only for the short duration of a poem) that though 'nothing's what we meant', we are the 'living word' of a nature that is not as indifferent and cold as we think; his eye and love for nature, whose landscape he will 'fix' and 'shine' with; and his ultimate acceptance of life and death as but one and to be equally cherished. I end my review with my favourite lines from 'Phantom', Paterson's elegy to his dear friend Michael Donaghy, for it reminds us that to be something, to have lived, is to die a thousand times over.

I closed my mouth and put out its dark light.
I put down Michael's skull and end my own.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, it's as if it has literally never occurred to Don Paterson that rhyming is optional, or as if he lives in a weird parallel universe where Eliot, Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Ted Hughes never existed, and John Betjeman is considered good. Not that I mind rhymes in modern poetry -- my favorite poet is Philip Larkin, after all -- but it needs to be done better than this end-stopped doggerel.

I'm being harsh. To be sure, there are some memorable poems in this book -- "The Lie," for instance, narrated by a man who keeps a six-year-old boy chained in his basement, a sort of fantasy character out of parental moral panics about child abductors, and "Phantom," an ambitious seven-part poem that (at least in part because it's in blank verse and hence does not rhyme) is by far the best thing in the book.

Everyone keeps talking about Landing Light being a great book, and I would have read that one instead, but The Strand didn't have it when I was there last month, so I got this one instead. I will still give Landing Light a try if I find it somewhere.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the poems in this collection use a variety of regular rhyming schemes, which is refreshing from a modern/post-modern poet. His non-rhyming work is excellent, too, though, as in:
"When they ask me what I saw, they all expect/ some blissed-out excuse for my not saying,/ but I know what I saw: I saw in everything/ the germ and genius of its own ascent,/ the fire of its increase; I saw the earth/ put forth the trees, like a woman her dark hair;/ I saw the sun's star and the river's river,/ I saw the whole abundant overflow;/..."

[M.B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent poems. Some too general-platitude-preachy ('we humans are this' 'we humans are that') even though agreed generally with the vision. Favourite poem a version of Cavafy, 'The Bowl-Maker'. Other good poems 'Two Trees', 'The Rain at Sea', 'The Story of the Blue Flower', 'The Wind', 'Phantom' (though 'Phantom' is mixed, a bit absolutist in parts). On the whole enjoyed very much, thought its praise deserved.

[UChicagoLaw]

"Rain by Don Paterson, a Scottish poet and musician, is an accessible, yet bracingly astringent, book of poems that captures both Patterson’s local cadences and also vocalizes evocatively wider concerns of aging, loss, and grief." - Aziz Z. Huq

[Sanjuro · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's rare that I find a well received collection that I dislike so much. The structures of the poems are varied, almost as exercises, and yet they all still feel so rigid and dry. In reading other reviews, readers have exposited some of the poems, and I find myself thinking "Where did you see that?" The poems are, for me, relatively lifeless.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always get nervous when I don't adore something that was on someone's top 10 list. These read unremarkably, a few pleasant surprises here and there. Plain speech and rhyme, few images. But an endearing earnestness.