Opera Et Cetera

Torqueing and tuning his long lines to the demands of rhyme, 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, 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.”