Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carson, Ciaran - Clair Wills (essay date 25 March 1994)

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Clair Wills (essay date 25 March 1994)

SOURCE: Wills, Clair. “Ulster Echolalia.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4747 (25 March 1994): 23.

[In the following review, Wills concludes that Carson's First Language is disappointing because the musicality of the language is overshadowed by the collection's larger intentions.]

The first poem in [First Language,] Ciaran Carson's fourth collection (an elegiac love poem) is in Irish, suggesting that what comes next (in English) is secondary in more ways than one. Yet any attempt by the reader to disentangle linguistic priorities is thwarted, as, throughout the volume, Carson draws attention to the chaos of languages and sign systems in history as well as in contemporary Belfast. The collection sports a representation of the Tower of Babel on the cover; First Language thus continues Carson's preoccupation with the failure of communication and understanding between groups and...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Clair Wills (review date 4 March 1988)
   2. John Drexel (essay date winter 1989)
   3. Mark Ford (review date 19 January 1989)
   4. John Lucas (review date 3 August 1990)
   5. Neil Corcoran (essay date 2 November 1990)
   6. Ben Howard (essay date April 1992)
   7. Michael Glover (review date 12 February 1994)
   8. Clair Wills (essay date 25 March 1994)
   9. Calvin Bedient (essay date October 1994)
   10. Guinn Batten (essay date summer 1995)
   11. Patricia Craig (review date 31 May 1996)
   12. Lawrence Norfolk (essay date 27 September 1996)
   13. Richard Eder (essay date 12 March 1997)
   14. Charles M. Madigan (review date 16 March 1997)
   15. David Nicholson (review date 22 July 1997)
   16. Denis Donoghue (essay date 27 November 1997)
   17. Terry Eagleton (review date 12 December 1997)
   18. Henry Hitchings (review date 12 December 1997)
   19. Christian Wiman (review date February 1998)
   20. Ben Howard (essay date spring 1998)
   21. John Kerrigan (essay date April 1998)
   22. Emily D'Aulaire (essay date October 1998)
   23. William Pratt (review date autumn 1999)
   24. Robert MacFarlane (review date 19 November 1999)
   25. David Carr-Gomm (review date 31 March 2001)
   26. Gregory Dart (review date 20 April 2001)
   27. Bernadette Murphy (review date 18 October 2001)
   28. Michelle Reale (review date fall 2002)
   29. Sean O'Brien (review date 10 January 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright