Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Synopsis
A rising star in the United Kingdom, contemporary Scottish poet Paterson is poised to become a major voice of our time. The London Review of Books calls him "one of the most talented Scottish writers of the new generation." The White Lie is the first and only American selection of Paterson’s lyric and urbane poems.
Book Magazine
Paterson's latest book collects poems from his first three volumes Nil, Nil; God's Gift to Women; and The Eyes along with five new poems. This is well-made verse, and Paterson exhibits a fine ear. But while the romantic notion of the autodidact who thumbs his nose at the old college dons is attractive, Paterson tends to overcompensate with heavy-handed erudition smothered in gritty, sentimental images of street love gone sour. The lines are sprinkled with predictable Gaelic references, good-old Anglo-Saxon vulgarity, obscure and archaic words and British Isles street slang. The poems frequently resort to violent adolescent fantasies and troubling visions of cruelty to women and children; Paterson is a younger, Scottish version of Bukowski. It's a bit of fun for the lads, and perhaps there's even an element of self-parody, but the tiresome, unrelenting nihilism feels more like impetuousness than outrage. As Paterson writes in a poem aptly titled " Advice": "To be quite honest with you,/none of this is terribly important."
Stephen Whited