‘strange architecture’: Ciaran Carson's Until Before After

Abstract

Ciaran Carson's Until Before After (2010), like many of Carson's recent books of poetry and prose, has an elaborate structure which does not obviously relate to the meaning and nature of the poetry in the volume. This essay suggests that it may be possible to ‘unlock’ meanings from the ‘strange architecture’ of Until Before After. Quentin Meillassoux's Le Nombre et La Sirène (2011) offers an example of a type of critical reading which pays attention to the intricacies (and numbers) of poetic form, in Meillassoux's case in a reading of Mallarmé’s Coup de Dés. Carson's Until Before After, in its unusual page constructions, use of partial sonnets, and potential hints at numerology, along with its allusions to Biblical and philosophical texts, can be read as being built around a pyramidal, mathematical form, which in turn is appropriate to its themes of death and resurrection.