Ciaran Carson's shape-changing genius shines across the volumes included
in From There to Here: Selected Poems and Translations. The explosive
long lines of his earliest work move to the formal skill and inventive
imagination of the middle period, while the concentrated stanzas and
intellectual intensities of the volumes after the year 2000 continue his
development. In recent years Carson's renditions of Rimbaud's
Illuminations as well as his translations and responses to the French
poet Jean Follain have added yet another dimension to his art and to the
act of translation. It seems that with each volume Carson re-casts
himself, much as Yeats did throughout his storied career. This selection
takes us on an exceptional journey as the poet "initiates a
constellation / from which blossom countless others."