Opera Et Cetera
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Torqueing and tuning his long lines to the demands of rhyme, Ciaran 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 in Opera Et Cetera, 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 suggests: “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,” Opera Et Cetera.
Reviews
“In Irish traditional music, very much a part of Carson’s life, the same tune should never be played the same way twice. [T]his use of performance and variation reflects on how people might exist only in the telling, in language, and how all experience might be a matter of language shuffling its cards. There is great joy in the resources of language, and great wit and humor.”
– Mark Roper, Irish Literary Supplement
Description
Torqueing and tuning his long lines to the demands of rhyme, Ciaran 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 in Opera Et Cetera, 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 suggests: “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,” Opera Et Cetera.
Reviews
“In Irish traditional music, very much a part of Carson’s life, the same tune should never be played the same way twice. [T]his use of performance and variation reflects on how people might exist only in the telling, in language, and how all experience might be a matter of language shuffling its cards. There is great joy in the resources of language, and great wit and humor.”
– Mark Roper, Irish Literary Supplement
Additional information
| Publication date: | 1996 |
|---|---|
| Pages: | 96 |
| Binding: |
