A review by casparb
Rain by Don Paterson

Don at arguably his Don-est these are super accessible but there's an awful lot of context to be read through to get to grips with Rain, which I only felt on this reread. It's his most iconic collection and it's all about Donaghy, his death, his persistence. I remember reading the opener Two Trees long ago and it came up on my gcse english paper or something like but never has it really scarred until Sunday. The poem is an axe wound, it wrenches


also it had slipped my mind from my last read but this is such a collection about paternity - some light and lightning in Wordsworthian senses like The Handspring but there's a longer one that aches (good thing) about the near-death of his son. not too common a subject, surprisingly. Male poets don't like talking about their kids so much, which i do find is their problem. Jack Underwood does it gorgeously, of course. I like how DP covers it. It's true