Name: Rain
ISBN: 9780571249572

Don Paterson

In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, Paterson conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and simultaneously offer some protection against them.

Rain

Gavin

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.