I was, as they later confirmed, a very sick boy
(Amnesia)
Reading this opening line by the uncertain light of a bedside lamp set a chain of visions flashing by; the phthisis Paterson gibbering in the socket of a brothel bed, febrile, slow turning eyes, spitting constantly the incomprehensible tongues that narrate human deterioration. I decided to turn on another light. Indeed, Paterson has proved himself to be very ill; establishing his disease early on, I was drawn inexorably to the bedside by his darkness, the gaunt misanthropy. But in pursuing his work, I watched him waste, his wrists getting thinner, the eyes duller, and saw as his tongues became wilder, became prophesies.
Don Paterson’s literary beginnings were far less romantic than may be imagined considering the success and notoriety that was to follow; a late night epiphany, he was first moved by a television reading performed by Tony Harrison, so hard was the sucker punch dealt then that an intensive year of personal study immediately followed. He poured through copious books, even reading the dictionary punishingly from cover to cover. The final product was a frightening vocabulary and his first collection Nil Nil, at last published in 1993. The book promised to be ‘frequently disturbing’, which turned out to be a warning label.
The collection is composed of strange, occluded sexual anecdotes, the sour grit of broken Scottish counties, and the preferably forgotten corners of childhood. But these constituents are frequented by sweetness, recollections of family, old friends, nostalgia for the various selves and Paterson’s own self who dip in and out of the pages. It is also a book interwoven with carefully placed rhyme and undetectable meter, shadowing the music that was Paterson’s foremost love and demonstrating the mutual, quavering note between them, a quiet but invaluable factor of Nil Nil, and one that gained Paterson immediate and considerable admiration, e.g.:
Four years later. Picture me: drenched in patchouli,
Strafed with hash burns, casually arranged
On Susie’s bed. Smouldering frangipani;
Dali’s The Persistence of Memory;
Unsurprisingly it was snapped up by the Poetry Book Society and awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection; critics were evidently impressed by Paterson’s cynical, but unapologetic voice, coupled with a formidable technical skill.
But though Nil Nil’s poetic slickness was and still is highly praised, the occasional clumsiness was often overlooked, particularly Paterson’s unfortunate use of simile. Take for example Dirty Weekend, a poem insisting upon the lines ‘We wake to no birds, but the smell of the glassworks/which hangs like the ghost of a terrible sock...’ Placed just off centre of this piece, the comparison maims the dismal feel of the poem with an unintentionally bathetic misnomer requiring a double take on the reader’s part, simply for the sake of rhyme. Though small flaws of expression were mostly overlooked, this being Paterson’s first collection and an unwritten lenience forgivingly applied.
Nil Nil though, is thoroughly unlike the poet’s consequent works. Paterson only truly began to explore over the following four years leading up to the publication of his second collection, no doubt an influence of the confidence which came with early success. At any rate Nil Nil is less concerned with communicating urgent messages as in his later work, it does not demand that we learn anything particularly edifying or inspiring. It is a lucid, cynical book of poems pinpointing a Self through its inextricable ties with others rather than attempting to achieve a Selfhood, or essential self by obliterating the concept of a fixed identity, the latter of which increasingly became Paterson’s aim and realization - by any means necessary.
Paterson later discovered more innovative ways to fall from consistency and cohesion with his own writing, a result of his converging needs to both break away from expectation and to plumb language to its extremities. The latter was elaborated by Paterson himself in his lecture The Dark Art of Poetry (October 04) in which he called for the poet to relinquish the lexical labels attached to all he saw, with the effect of mentally disbanding from all human law governing the perception of the world, enforced by language. ‘When we allow silence to reclaim those objects and things of the world... they resume their own genius, and repossess something of their own mystery... they return as strangers’. The problem being however, that if they come back as strangers, how likely is it that the poet will recognize them?
This fever for absolute definition crept through Paterson’s work and recognition was what became more hit-and-miss as he continued to write. His poems acquired the tendency to be at times tuned crystal clear into the world and at others, oddly removed from it, breaking from his original gritty, ever so realistically sensitive description to something far more outlandish and unnaturally cross-dimensional. Though this strange tipping sensation itself was a point of intrigue for most critics; writing for Paterson’s first book of selected works (his long awaited introduction to American readers) The White Lie (2001) Billy Collins noted on Paterson’s poems - ‘every one [is] composed with care and a billiard-player’s feel for the way language can spin us subtly this way and that’. The poet’s daring in and out of the bonds of definition then, began and continued to bend readers in strange ways, leaving his continued success a matter of whether or not such disorientation was appreciated.
Paterson’s second collection God’s Gift to Women appeared in 1997, and was awarded upon its entrance into the world both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. It is here Paterson began to develop his increasingly infamous postmodern concepts.
Among the familiar cynicism, dark sexual overtones and occasional barking vernacular, were a few more experimental, even Larkin-escque tricks. The opener Prologue, metamorphoses poetry into ‘a little church... you its congregation, I its cantor’ and proceeds to a stiff reprimand of its own readers: bored, unappreciative and uncooperative in the pews.
The reflectivity of such poems is fairly given credit as ‘witty and intellectually nimble’ (Douglas Dunn) However, a sour, prophetic edge is insuppressible when we are urged in pure evangelistic style to ‘raise the fucking tone’, a self righteous tang of moral urgency that permeates God’s Gift... and much of Paterson’s following collections. Though perhaps it is just the taste of bad medicine; if the poet himself is at such a stage of moral advancement and we are so deaf to the importance and relevance of poetry, then perhaps a patronising caricature of ourselves is desperately needed. Upon opening God’s Gift... it was clear that Paterson had shifted position; once he shuffled by his readers’ sides, guiding them through old alleyways, long-closed stations, now he stands above them chiding their idleness along the way, an old identity lost.
The biggest positive advancement in God’s Gift... is the follow-up to Nil Nil’s highly acclaimed The Alexandrian Library - Part II: The Return of the Book. The series which to date spans three collections follows the trial of writing the perfect piece. In God’s Gift... more than ever before, Paterson is reflexive; he writes fully conscious as both writer and reader, critical of the bathetic way in which a poem is flushed from its corners, namely in black coffee, hangovers and by sprawling luxuriously in mental block e.g. ‘the brilliant plan you have unconsciously nursed/for the past fifteen minutes turns out merely/the prospect of having a wank before teatime.’ At critical points in this poem Paterson earths himself (as above) via the reality of the writing process, perhaps the best being an admittance of his own repetitiveness of subject matter:
The new poem is coming along like a dream:
this is the big one, the one that will finally
consolidate everything. It is the usual,
but different: a series of localized, badly lit,
paradigmatic atrocities seen from a train
at the hour between dusk and oblivion,
but - O - his audacity!...
These first metaphysical bursts are humorous, biting, even charming in their sudden awareness of reality. Although, as this technique became a much more familiar convention, it circled like a literary loop hole, excused under the pretense of elaborate awareness. In other words, should Paterson commit an ill fitting, dry or even clichéd blunder, this could be accepted as long as he reflected upon it as such. The ‘I meant to do that’ trick began as a smart quip, but via its frequency gained a potential to be tiresome. The taste of the metaphysical sampled sparingly in Nil Nil, became uncomfortable as Paterson’s insistence on it increased that he might risk and distinguish himself.
But the above alone is not enough to dismiss God’s Gift to Women entirely. Despite the bad aftertaste left in the minds eye, it is a highly skillful collection and rightly recognized as such, the tense air of foreboding remains, together with the sense that to read Paterson is to be looking in on something that you really shouldn’t.
Paterson’s first book of versions followed in 1999, a collection of works by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, whose literary ‘spirit’ Paterson took great pains to translate into English. This was entitled The Eyes.
A peculiarity after his previous two collections, Paterson coolly slipped on a new tone of voice, becoming the wise and proverbial philosopher. Once again the poet prophesies, though in a more romantic way than before. The collection is composed of parables and proverbs to reawaken us to Machado’s once radical, open minded concept of human life, calling us to shake off our rigidly linear pattern of thinking and journeying through existence itself. Machado’s rebirth into English understanding primarily aims to direct our attentions to the solid present, rather than the implacable and often governing points of the beginning and end.
It would be wrong to infer that in versioning, essential Paterson had been lost, in fact Paterson’s style and tone is still visible through the gaps left in the façade. Though he sometimes comes up as harsh or disillusioning against the quiet sadness and Mediterranean backdrop, it does however give these old parables a contemporary edge bringing Machado’s work into a new relevance. But more importantly the guise allowed Paterson’s teachings on finding the unaffected, constant state to turn flesh and be validated by its homage.
After stepping out in this new voice there was a predictable change in Paterson’s poetry, the residue of the poet/theologian still clinging to his work. As Paterson explains ‘Versioning allows a poet to disown their own voice and try on another... when the poet returns to reclaim their own voice, it either no longer quite fits, or has altered.’ Hence in his following collection, the much acclaimed Landing Light (2003) the prophet with his book of parables made a more audacious appearance.
Upon its debut Landing Light was considered an enormous success, with hugely positive reviews in leading newspapers and literary journals. Adam Newey writing in The Guardian (15.11.03) applauded Paterson’s wit - ‘at the same time both deadly serious and seriously funny’, while Bernard O’Donoghue of The Independent (27.09.03) concluded that Paterson ‘can still do pretty well anything’. The general feeling of awe surrounding the new publication was that year incarnated into a Whitbread Poetry Award and yet another T.S. Eliot Prize, an encore never before achieved by any other poet.
Landing Light however, is a strange apparition, a very difficult thing to love straight away; it is both impressive and frustrating in its zigzags of tone, style and meter, giving it a variety that crackles, but can also grate with a sudden swerve or an over zealousness to risk take and challenge. This forth collection is the end product of a refinement of Paterson’s daring and persistent innovation, so one should come prepared.
Landing Light feels a cloak-and-dagger sort of collection; the opening poems finely tuned in their receptiveness, The Thread and Waking with Russell demonstrating Paterson’s ability to flit between the fulcrum points of experience, evidencing an emotional maturity. Then, lured in on a pretense of sensitivity we are struck with a black, condemning version of Danté, and following that, dense gothic and more knotted fables in The Forest of the Suicides and The Hunt. Throughout the first half Paterson is calling his reader’s bluff, pandering to then flouting our expectations only to turn it around in yet another reflective sweep, once again revealing our presumptuousness. This is still admittedly intelligent, but done already, and preaching to an audience already so convinced in this, that it appears they simply enjoy the punishment.
Granted there is a humor in Paterson’s contempt for his reader and frantic obliteration of any label which could restrain him, but while his daring means and breadth of style are praiseworthy, the ardency with which he pursues his end is open to question. A good example is in his batting back and forth between methods of rhyme; from his patented subtlety and quiet consonantal rhyme i.e. The Last Waltz ‘...We’re nearly home/I watch the condensation gently throb/across the window like a fleet of sperm’ to uncharacteristically blunt rhyming quatrains i.e. A Fraud ‘It strained through the gap/as a little clear tongue/that replenished its shape/with the shape of its song’ lumbering like a moralistic ballad. In a bid to distinguish between what is expected of him and what he is so desperate to achieve, Paterson disposes of himself, leaving readers staring hopelessly in his absence until he reappears in another fantastic metaphysical swoop. But how far the enjoyment of this is considered a literary masochism, is entirely personal.
But that certainly isn’t to say that Landing Light’s out of body poetry is all hard to swallow. Quite contrary, A Talking Book is poignant, witty and dripping with that old loved cynicism (one relic that has thankfully been retained) consistent in its feel yet unpredictable, the sport is in keeping up with the rants and quirks:
...now we’re of one mind now, i.e. yours -
a little psychometric test. Now choose
from the following...
...If you answered a) b) c) d) e) or f)
you’re not taking this seriously enough.
Essentially all of Landing Light is to be appreciated, but to enjoy it is a different matter. First of all it requires strong nerves, persistence and a good sense of humor; since this Paterson aims to trip his reader up, you must therefore compromise to laugh along with him.
Orpheus, a version of Rilke’s fifty-five sonnets, came in 2006. Having arrived so soon after the drama and astonishment of Landing Light, it seems that Paterson has quite vented his poetic ire and now his choice of subject reflects a mind at peace - at least for now.
After the schizophrenic forth collection, it looks as though Rilke’s model has provided a pacifier for Paterson’s affliction; having generously communicated his own mysticisms, the poet turns on those of another, but in an unexpectedly wonderful way. As Adam Phillips wrote in The Observer (29.10.06) ‘what Paterson has done, simple as it might sound, is make quite clear the ways in which Rilke's sonnets are actually extraordinary poems rather than the cluttered and vapid musings of an aspiring mystic’.
Paterson’s method of versioning sheds some light on the depth and breadth of Rilke’s most puzzling work; by finding out the original sense of the poem from the paradigm of a language unfamiliar to it, then injecting his own developed sense of importance, selfawarness and appreciation of both gravitas and detail, Orpheus is alive and relevant, with a joy of being we had yet to have truly seen in Patteron’s work. It appears as though the persuit of the perfect actuallity is resolved, the sick boy lying back quietly, his colour returning; it will be interesting to see whether he returns to his argumentitive experiments or remains so settled and serene as here:
But for us...Being here is still magic, a source
with a thousand wellheads; a net of pure force
that no one can touch and not kneel down in awe.
Before the beyond-words, words scatter like straw
and music still quarries its purposeless space
For the vibrant rock, to build its holy place.
(The Real)
Catherine Woodward
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