Rain is a truly important book, not only in the development of this must-read poet, but because it engages with the rough and tumble of life in a way we recognise as true. Read it now, before it becomes famous.—Fiona Sampson, The Independent
I am not always a fan of what is considered well crafted traditional poems. Often they feel dry to me or too controlled. There is no "pop." I have to work to get the meaning and when I do I say, hmm. Paterson's poetry in RAIN has that subtle pop and is well crafted. The "pop" to me is the way the poem shows how life feels. The poems are a joy to read. Read The New Yorker review.
In “Rain,” what matters is children, friends, and work. What also matters, it turns out, is matter, matter driven by the uncompromising laws of matter. Friends die, work comes to nothing, a child’s pride is undone by “the flutter in his signature.” Imagining people, for Paterson, requires imagining with equal and competing sympathy the enormous latticework of impersonal, indifferent matter that surrounds them. Mentions Robert Frost. The heart of the book isn’t loss, exactly, but, rather, a crisis over how to think about loss.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/04/19/100419crbo_books_chiasson
Rain
Don Paterson
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 long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;
one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/05/26/080526po_poem_paterson#ixzz1AS8kITcs
Don Paterson's biography
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth206
