Don Paterson, 40 Sonnets (Faber)There were a few minutes on first looking into Paterson's Sonnets that I thought I might be reading the best book of poems I'd ever read.
Here begins,
I must quit sleeping in the afternoon,
I do it for my heart, but all too soon
my heart has called it off. It does not love me.
If it downed tools then there'd be nothing of me.
Its hammer-beat says 'you are', not 'I am'.
It prints me off here like a telegram.
Once in a blue moon one reads a poem one would have given something very precious (right arm or left leg) to have written and this poem would be one of them if poetry was that important. It doesn't stop there, as this meditation on alienation from self, expands into alienation from life itself and, ultimately, the mother he sprang from. The dour Dundonian disdains to debauch himself with any trace of sentimentality and yet does it so beautifully that not giving an inch to indulgence, providing every excuse not to dance is reason to dance in itself.
Of course, one might say that is too self-indulgent, being so un-Romantic that it must be trying too hard but not only does it read authentically but other poems, later in the book, show Paterson more than capable of deep emotional ties, engagement with 'other modes of being' or examining the world from a variety of points of view. That can't be done without sympathy, empathy or any of those things. It's the self that he doubts and if it doesn't look as lush as Keats then perhaps it shares some kindred 'negative capability'.
It's unlikely that a book of 40 pieces is going to sustain the impact of quite such a first poem. It's a good idea to start with some of the stronger ones but it might be best to put the very best later on. I don't always begin reading collections of poems at page 1, but this time I did.
Shakespeare had his way of writing sonnets, as did Petrarch. Paterson uses a wide variety of sonnet forms without extending it beyond the definition of 14 lines, except for one. Different rhyme schemes, different line lengths and, among the 40 pieces, one is two and a half pages of prose, just to show that a sonnet can be whatever it wants to be just as much as a poem is a poem if it says it is.
Yes, yes, okay. There's Seance, possibly making contact with the spirit of Bob Cobbing and proving that concrete poetry can still be done. I'll happily take the point if I ever get to hear Paterson read the poem so that I can hear what it sounds like but why, when there are a dozen or more immaculate poems in the book, would one want to take refuge in the recondite methods of olde worlde avant gardistes when it is obvious that one is one of the most accomplished living poets in the language.
We don't even need the critique of Tony Blair in The Big Listener. Poetry is better than politics and demeans itself a little bit when getting this much involved. It's a fine poem, as are many of his colleague, Sean O'Brien's, but now we have Jeremy Corbyn in place we can surely leave all that to the Labour party.
No, once you discount the few misses that any great collection or tremendous album must be allowed (and we can include the Velvet Underground in that), 40 Sonnets is a great book, demonstrating how good poetry can still be, from the natural inheritor of the legacy of the late, lamented Michael Donaghy.
There are no rules about how it should be done and, if there were, precious few could produce poems like some of these by the fearsome Don. There are many here that warrant glorious mention, analysis and deeper enjoyment but,
Will it all
come to nothing, if nothing came to this?
('The Air')