Landing Light

Paterson, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571219934 ISBN 13: 9780571219933

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2003

Landing Light is Don Paterson's most accomplished and spiritual collection to date. In these poems, he guides us down the labyrinths of our deepest and most private concerns, pursuing the intimacy that the spoken - as well as the printed - word brings. Ceaselessly inquiring, deftly tuned into the emotional crackle of the world, Paterson explores the swings of light and dark that mark our most troubling feelings: utterance and silence, disclosure and concealment, and ultimately the need to both renew and to face finality. 'Paterson's Landing Light is a work of fierce intelligence and, at times, breathtaking lyrical beauty. He is one of the few poets writing today whose work combines post-modern playfulness with a sense of yearning for the transcendental.' Christina Patterson, Independent 'I have been completely absorbed in Don Paterson's new book of poems, Landing Light. They are dramatic and moving, funny and terrible. He writes with a metaphysical with, and does strong new things with the English (and Scottish) language. I looked in idly and keep going back.' A. S. Byatt, Guardian

Review:

"America is in for a delightful treat now that the work of Scottish poet Don Paterson is within its easy reach. A perfect blend of light and dark humor, his poems combine the mordant with the celebratory, the sweetness of the heart with the bitter taste of experience. Most of all, he knows how to write poems in whichevery line is awake, every one composed with care and a billiardplayer's feel for the way language can spin us subtly this way and that." --Billy Collins "It's a long time since I've been knocked sideways by a book of poems, but the life, energy, verbal precision, and inventiveness of Don Paterson's "Landing Light "kept me awake at night." --A. S. Byatt, "The Guardian"

Book Description:

Landing Light by Don Paterson, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Poetry 2003: 'The most animated and animating volume of new poems I have read for years.' Times Literary Supplement