Carson, Ciaran - Guinn Batten (essay date summer 1995)

Guinn Batten (essay date summer 1995)

SOURCE: Batten, Guinn. “Ciaran Carson's Parturient Partition: the “Crack” in McNeice's ‘More Than Glass’.” Southern Review 31, no. 3 (summer 1995): 536-56.

[In the following essay, Batten explains the Irish concept of “crack” and how Carson employs it in Belfast Confetti.]

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it
…
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

—from “Snow,” by Louis MacNeice

                                                                                          I broke open the husk so many times
And always found it empty; the pith was a wordless bubble.

Though there's nothing in the thing itself, bits of it come back
                    unbidden,...

[The entire page is 8149 words long]

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