SOURCE: Wills, Clair. “Ulster Echolalia.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4747 (25 March 1994): 23.

In the following review, Wills concludes that Carson's First Language is disappointing because the musicality of the language is overshadowed by the collection's larger intentions.

The first poem in [First Language,] Ciaran Carson's fourth collection (an elegiac love poem) is in Irish, suggesting that what comes next (in English) is secondary in more ways than one. Yet any attempt by the reader to disentangle linguistic priorities is thwarted, as, throughout the volume, Carson draws attention to the chaos of languages and sign systems in history as well as in contemporary Belfast. The collection sports a representation of the Tower of Babel on the cover; First Language thus continues Carson's preoccupation with the failure of communication and understanding between groups and individuals in Ireland. Repeated references to ziggurats and clinker-built ships signify the stepped and layered nature of the...