A crime/war poem from Ciaran Carson

Here's another poem that packs the punch of a good crime story. The poem is "Trap," from Ciaran Carson's 2003 collection Breaking News and also available in his Collected Poems:

backpack radio
antenna

twitching
rifle

headphones
cocked

I don'
read you

what the

over

Here are more Detectives Beyond Borders posts about poetry that may appeal to readers of crime fiction (Click on the link, then scroll down.)
 
© Peter Rozovsky 2013

McKinty, Ciaran Carson, and Belfast Confetti

My panel on wartime crime fiction at Bouchercon 2013 got me thinking of the heavy responsibility attendant on writing about war: How does one do justice to the weight of the subject while writing a compelling, entertaining piece of work? How does a writer fulfill aesthetic as well as moral and ethical responsibilities?

Here's how Ciaran Carson does it in "Belfast Confetti," writing about the sort-of-war that was Northern Ireland's Troubles:

Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks,
Nuts, bolts, nails, car keys. A fount of broken type.
And the explosion
Itself – an asterisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire …
I was trying to complete a sentence in my head, but it kept stuttering,
All the alleyways and side-streets blocked with stops and colons.

I know this labyrinth so well – Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street –
Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated.
Crimea Street. Dead end again.
A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields.
Walkie-talkies. What is
My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I
going? A fusillade of question-marks.

I first heard of Carson through Adrian McKinty, and I found that several of Carson's poems reminded me of the opening chapters of McKinty's novels I Hear the Sirens in the Street and The Dead Yard. And lo, it transpires that the prologue to Dead I Well May Be, the book that got me reading McKinty in the first place, is called "Belfast Confetti." I attached no special significance to that title when I read the novel, however, because I had not read Carson at the time.

Sample Carson's poetry here, read a bit about him, and hear him read "Belfast Confetti."

Troll McKinty's blog or a bookseller's site to read the openings of those three novels and see what I mean about similarities to Carson. Better yet, read the books.

 © Peter Rozovsky 2013

Gained in translation

Here's one difference between the two translations of The Táin  that I've been reading. Where Joseph Dunn's 1914 version has

"`It was a wealth, forsooth, we never heard nor knew of,' Ailill said; `but a woman's wealth was all thou hadst, and foes from lands next thine were used to carry off the spoil and booty that they took from thee.'"

 Ciaran Carson's 2007 version offers

"`If you were, I never heard tell of it,' said Ailill, `apart from your woman's assets that your neighbour enemies kept plundering and raiding.'"

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

What I'm about to read on my sort-of vacation

I'm off to Boston tomorrow accompanied by Ciaran Carson, Cú Chulainn, Thomas Pynchon and, in case I get too cheerful, Dead Man Upright, part of Melville House's new editions of Derek Raymond's Factory novels.

I'll read Pynchon's Inherent Vice curious about why he chose the hard-boiled-detective form to tell a story set in the psychedelic 1960s and, according to a cover blurb, about the end of an era. (Reviewers call the novel noir, but I assume that most people who call a crime story noir really mean hard-boiled. If I'm wrong in this case, I'll say so.)

There's no such doubt about Derek Raymond. He's noir, and I've heard tell that next to Dead Man Upright, his previous bleak, funny, touching Factory novels are light entertainment.

Here's some of what I've written about Raymond:

"He was a latter-day Hammett, I thought when I read Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez. He was a new Chandler, I thought when I read the opening chapters of  The Devil's Home on Leave.

"With one novel-plus of Raymond under my belt, I say he's a bit of both. His nameless detective-sergeant protagonist is as dedicated to his job as was Sam Spade or the Continental Op, and he yearns like Philip Marlowe, only there's not a trace of nostalgia about him. He's as hard and as heart-breaking as the best of the dark crime writers who followed him and who invoke his name as reverently as they do Hammett's and Chandler's."

And here's some of what you'll find about Derek Raymond on the Melville House Web site.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012