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Amazon.co.uk Review
This collection demonstrates the sonnet's enduring appeal to poets from the 16th century to the present-day--from Wyatt, Shakespeare and Milton, to Armitage, Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy. Paterson cleverly opts for a non-chronological approach--his innovative juxtaposition makes fresh even familiar examples, and his brief notes on each poem's technique and treatment of subject are illuminating, laconic and often irreverent. If the tone of these annotations veers occasionally towards the bluff and overly matey, it is perhaps an indication of Paterson's confidence in the form hitched to the sensibility of a seasoned craftsman--the introduction likewise shifts from the pragmatic and informative to the speculatively baroque--but the end result is a collection of many pleasures and surprises and a bold reassertion of the continuing tradition of formal poetry. --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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That's how Don Paterson concludes his crash course on the sonnet which forms the introduction to this little jewel box of a book. Master of the aphorism, he carries his elegantly succinct style into the notes on each one, deftly throwing open even the least inviting and initially inaccessible poems of the collection.
There are many classics here, from all the undisputed experts. Even Shakespeare is allowed only one entry though, leaving plenty of room for newer and less familiar writers. But why do the editors of these collections never feel able to slip in one of their own works? An acclaimed sonneteer himself, Don Paterson is ideal as editor but surely he should qualify as one of the 101 too?
You don't need to know one end of a sonnet from another to get a lot out of this collection. If he'd called it 101 poems with rather a pleasing shape, which each takes up about two thirds of a small page, and most of which will kick you in the stomach, I'd still have carried the book around for weeks, and would still be reaching for it when heading for the bus stop. I'm not sure it's made my life easier to bear, but it's certainly made an English February easier to endure.
So if you want examples of some pretty damn stunning sonnets which may not be in your existing poetry collections - read her review for a couple of tasty samples.
The foreword to this collection is vivid and muscular, the least dry explanation of the evolution of the sonnet out there. Paterson's own visceral response to poetry is palpable and infectious.
The sonnets are ordered not by alphabetical author progressions, or by date; instead there is almost the sense of each sonnet, leading onto the next as part of a larger ordering of themes, so that the subject matters of the poems slowly progress - sonnets devoted to sexual love and praise of the beloved, sonnets which are almost physically sensuous in their devotion to praising the divine (nice juxtapositions of sonnets lingeringly describing kissing the beloved, to the first poem in 'the divine' series, a sonnet by Wilfred Owen describing kissing the Cross. And on.
This very subtle, personal but unexplained, un spelt out (by Paterson) ordering of the sonnets is itself a delight and revelation, so that one can have a very modern sonnet cheek by jowl with one of the very well known ones, and the progression of subject and neighbouring sonnets slightly change the way one reads the familiar sonnet - it becomes 'as though for the first time' once more
As another reviewer also notes, the 5 or 6 line notes on each sonnet right at the end of the book are excellent and illuminating - but utterly unobtrusive. Paterson trusts the sonnets, and the reader's personal experience of those sonnets properly, and does not forcefully insert his own interpretation of them onto yours. You have your own relationship with each poem, and can then choose to see, not a dissection of the poem, but the recounting of someone else's experience of it. He doesn't break the lovely thing apart, he leaves it whole, but maybe encourages the reader to look afresh or through different eyes.
Firstly - I am enjoying Don's Shakespeare Sonnets Book immensely. It is just BRILLIANT. Read more
I would love to have all three books. What can I do.
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