101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney [Paperback]

The sonnet is, along with the limerick, the most widely known poetic form and whereas the limerick is used almost exclusively for humourous--if not downright ribald--ends (though Tennyson supposedly wrote a melancholy example), the sonnet is an altogether nobler structure, with Shakespeare's sonnet sequence being the most virtuoso expression of its poetic possibilities. As Don Paterson, himself an accomplished poet and sonneteer, observes in his introduction, the sonnet's rules of construction are both strict and easily broken, but its 14 lines and patterning of rhythm and rhyme outline a form of great versatility, capable of encompassing complex perception, wit and amourous rumination: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's claim that "A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-- / Memorial from the Soul's eternity" is evidence of the loftier aspirations of the form, while Sean O'Brien's line "What better excuse to go out and get pissed?" exemplifies the sonnet's more profane pleasures.

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

A collection of classic sonnets introduced by one of Britain's foremost contemporary poets --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Poets have been fascinated and challenged by the sonnet ever since it was imported from Italy to England in the 16th century. Don Paterson, himself an adept of the form, has devised an anthology of personal favourites and canonical examples that celebrate high moments in the sonnet's history.

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. He is the author of Nil Nil (1993), God's Gift to Women (1997) - winner of both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize - and Landing Light (2003), which won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry. Rain, his most recent collection, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2009, the same year that he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Find out more about Don Paterson at www.donpaterson.com.