OPERA ET CETERA

by Ciaran Carson

Torqueing and tuning his long lines to the demands of rhyme, Carson skitters from Northern Ireland to Romania to the “twin volcanoes—Balalaika, Karaoke,” from the Irish language to the Latin roots of English. In the opening series of alphabet poems, Carson turns the synchronic ABC’s into isolable histories, miniature mysteries that, in sequence, compose a sinister, narrative trajectory, one that may not arrive at an ending, or that may conclude by questioning its beginnings. Meaning itself may fail in its delivery, as the final poem of the sequence “In the morning you open up the envelope. You will get whatever / Message is inside. It is for all time. Its postmark is ‘The Twelfth of Never’” (“Z”). Words and stories proliferate, exuberantly and often hilariously, as Carson makes play of the “work” that is “Opera.”

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Ciaran Gerard Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast and educated at The Queen’s University, Belfast. He knows intimately not only the urban Belfast in which he was raised as a native Irish speaker, but also the traditions of rural Ireland. A traditional musician and a scholar of the Irish oral traditional, Carson was long the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and is a flutist, tinwhistler, and singer. He is Chair of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre for poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is married to fiddle player Deirdre Shannon, and has three children.

He is author of over a dozen volumes of poetry, as well as translations of the Táin and of Dante’s Inferno, and novels, non-fiction, and a guide to traditional Irish music. Carson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978.

Reviews

[Francisca]

*forgot to update this from yesterday*

[scarlettraces]

I didn't have the patience to mine this properly.