Carson, Ciaran - Ben Howard (essay date April 1992)

Ben Howard (essay date April 1992)

SOURCE: Howard, Ben. Review of Belfast Confetti, by Ciaran Carson. Poetry 160, no. 1 (April 1992): 41-4.

[In the following review, Howard concludes that Carson's exploration of Belfast in Belfast Confetti is compelling.]

“All poets adore explosions,” wrote Auden in “The Poet & the City,” but the tone of Ciarán Carson's new collection [Belfast Confetti], set in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, is seldom that of adoration. It is one of dark, sardonic mirth. Rather than keen for losses or decry atrocities, these fluid, vibrant poems capture the crackling ambience of contemporary Belfast, where “everything is contingent and provisional,” where familiar places are “swallowed in the maw of time and trouble,” and where a woman, sitting in her car, stoops for the dashboard cigarette lighter and finds her permanent wave “neatly parted” by a bullet. Writing in long,...

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