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Sat 01 Jan 2010The line of beauty
FICTION: BRIAN LYNCHreviews The Pen FriendBy Ciaran Carson, Blackstaff Press, 256pp. £14.99
CONTEMPORARY Irish writers are crazy about ekphrasis. Why the verbal representation of visual art should engage stylists as diverse as John Banville, Paul Durcan and now, triumphantly, Ciaran Carson is a subject too broad to be opened out in this narrow space. Suffice it to say that ekphrasis has emerged as a favoured literary practice in a period of often violent social change in Ireland, particularly in the area of sexuality: it’s no accident, I think, that Durcan called his National Gallery poems Crazy About Women.
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