Ciaran Carson (1948–2019)

This should replace Beowulf on all syllabi immediately. It's funny and violent and completely bonkers. And it features a queen that likes to sweeten deals by offering "the friendship of her own thighs." What's not to love? Okay, the lists of warriors Cú Chulainn kills do get old after the first 100 or so deaths, but they can be skimmed over without losing any of the mad wonderfulness of this epic.

The Tain is epic. In fact it is Epic - at least as Epic as more famous Epics, such as the Iliad. In fact, the number of correspondences between the Cattle Raid of Cooley and the story of Achilles' rage is remarkable. (It must be - I just remarked it.) Wanna know what they are (at least some of them, anyway)? Oi - you at the back! stop saying, "No."

here we go:
Illiad: Achilles only vulnerable on one heel.
Tain: CuChulain's foster brother only vulnerable to a gae bolga shoved where the sun show more doesn't shine. (The gae bolga is a mysterious design of spear - the blade had backward pointing barbs - other aspects of the design are obscure and variously interpreted.)
Illiad: Lots of riding round in chariots, killing people.
Tain: Lots of riding round in chariots, killing people.
Illiad: Lots of stomping around on foot, killing people.
Tain: Lots of stomping around on foot, killing people.
Illiad: Single combat.
Tain: Single combat. Generally in a ford that gets its name from the event.
Illiad: Riding round in a chariot, dragging the corpse of your enemy behind you.
Tain: Riding round in a chariot, dragging the corpse of your enemy behind you.
Illiad: Supernatural intervention.
Tain: Supernatural intervention.
Illiad: Heaps of famous heroes.
Tain: Heaps of famous heroes, especially near the end.
Illiad: Big fight over a beautiful woman.
Tain: Big fight over a prize bull. Okay - not such a close correspondence.
Illiad: Javelins.
Tain: Spears.
Illiad: Achilles chooses a short life but ever-lasting fame. (But maybe this isn't mentioned in the Illiad - I can't remember.)
Tain: CuChulain chooses a short life rather than everlasting ridicule. (But not during the Cattle Raid.)
Illiad: Achilles' rage.
Tain: CuChulain's "warp-spasm".
Illiad: Verse.
Tain: Mainly prose - some cryptic verse.

So, by now you should be convinced that the pagan Celts in Ireland were just as crazy and violent as any ancient Achaen group you care to name and appreciated the stories of their ancestors' crazy violence as much, too.

Three fifties of Bards couldn't praise this Epic enough, so I won't even try - just read it and find out how many boys can play hurling on the back of Ulster's prize bull, how CuChulain (the Hound of Culann) got his name and weapons and the name of every ford, hill and rock that figured in CuChulain's almost single handed defense of Ulster from an army of 30,000! show less

"Keeping people out and keeping people in, we are prisoners or officers in Bentham's Panopticon, except sorting out who's who is a problem for the naïve user, and some compilers are inclined to choke on the mixed mode - panopticons within panopticons -" "Intelligence"

Boundaries, identity and surveillance are prominent themes in this poetry collection. Growing up in Belfast during "The Troubles," Carson creates images of the daily violence and disruption, of the stories and the memories show more fueled by the long history of partisanship. His title Belfast Confetti refers to the homemade bombs and the nails, pieces of bricks and other detritus that armed them.

His pieces are varied: haiku that he translates from the Japanese masters, like Buson and Basho, prose essays, and poems with very long lines. I have learned that those lines are about 17 syllables long (the length of a haiku). Carson wanted each line to feel like a haiku. This helped my reading and understanding a lot. It also helped me understand why he included the other translations of haiku.

I know that I missed a lot of the nuances in his poetry. It alludes to a lot of events that people from Belfast would know. His prose pieces, especially, taught me a lot. These pieces often dig deeper into Belfast's history. I think I will be returning to those to reread and ponder their beauty and significance.

I will end with a interesting tidbit. The poem "Hamlet" explains that the Irish fál can mean "hedge; Hence, any kind of enclosed thing" and later "fál, is also frontier, boundary." It is from this word that the Falls Road gets its name; it always meant a separation or a division.

These poems are powerful, but they are not an easy read linguistically or emotionally. show less

Easy to read with a clear modern english script. Gets repetitive in the middle third because everyone just dies immediately when they encounter Cu Chulainn but frequently this is surprisingly funny. Bonkers violent, but funny.
Skip the introduction, it's mostly Carson talking about someone else's translation. Like, why are you even doing this yourself if you think the other guys' is so great, man?