In Still Life , Ciaran Carson guides us through centuries of art and around the Belfast Waterworks where he walks with his wife, Deirdre; into the chemo ward; into memory and the allusive quicksilver of his mind, always bidding us to look carefully at the details of a painter\'s canvas, as well as the sunlight of day.
There --that in the midst of illness, even in the face of death, there is, still, life..
Balancing the desire to escape into the stillness and permanence of art with the insistent yearning to be fully present in each moment, Carson reminds us--Look ...
They could be us, out for a walk. ...
At times, the two seem to escape into the paintings themselves: Standing by the high farmstead in the upper left of the picture--there --in a patch of / sunlight.
Yet, Deirdre stands as much in the center of these poems as do the paintings.
A thorn becomes the nib of a writer\'s pencil and the pointed pipette of a chemo drip entering the poet\'s vein.
This master translator chooses here to translate the painter\'s brush with the poet\'s pen, finding resemblances, echoes, and parallels.
In Still Life , Ciaran Carson guides us through centuries of art and around the Belfast Waterworks where he walks with his wife, Deirdre; into the chemo ward; into memory and the allusive quicksilver of his mind, always bidding us to look carefully at the details of a painter\'s canvas, as well as the sunlight of day
