Product Details

• Published on: 1997-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 85 pages

Review
The author of three previous books of poetry and a study of Irish writing, this Alfred University professor turns to Ireland again as the scene for this verse novella, a long psychological portrait of its narrator, a middle-aged American lexicographer who heads to Ireland during WW II in order to sort out his recent divorce. In supple rhythms, Howard shares the "earthy consonants and liquid vowels" of the Irishmen he marvels at, with their "predilections/For whiskey and horses" and their "cunning indolents and outright rogues." With one section for each of the six years abroad, the narrator admires the Irish neutrality in war and natural sense of tragedy. Suffering himself from an affliction "Which causes Iowans to see the world/as more coherent than it really is," this boozy American "invader" tries to reconcile the stem moralizing of his parents - remembered at the oddest moments - with his evolving sense of "instinct, chance, and circumstance" as the forces ruling his life. The "moral dread" of his past relaxes in the "bitter, eremitic joy" of monastic contemplation, and he finds "consolation in a landscape." The "bungled life" of Howard's troubled lexicographer makes for an entertaining poem - which compensating for its lack of narrative drive with simple psychic truths. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

True North
Fred Johnston was born in Belfast. He was educated there and in Canada and now lives in Galway. In 1972 he received a Hennessy Award for prose in 1981 and 1982 respectively the Sunday Independent awards for poem and story of the month. In 1988 he received an Irish Arts Council literary bursary and was appointed writer-in-residence to Galway City and County Libraries. In 1986 he founded Cuirt, Galway's annual poetry (now poetry and literature) festival. A reviewer of new poetry and fiction, his reviews have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review (USA), The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish University Review; he is the regular poetry reviewer for Books Ireland and he has also reviewed new fiction for Harpers & Queen. Occasionally he reviews biography for The Cork Examiner, theatre for The Sunday Press and exhibitions for The Sunday Times. He has published one novel and five volumes of poetry. His prose and poetry have appeared widely in Ireland, the US and Canada. In Great Britain poems have appeared in The Spectator, Iron, Orbis, Poetry London, Cencrastus, Oxford Poetry, Gairfish (Scotland), and stories in The London Magazine, Panurge and Stand. True North is Fred Johnston's sixth collection of poetry.


PRAISE FOR TRUE NORTH

Review by Patrick Chapman "True North, Fred Johnston's sixth collection of poems, is a curious book. Curious not only in its seeking out of strangeness in the ordinary -- a theme current in the poetry of late twentieth century Ireland -- but in that it has a beginning, a middle and an end not, as Godard might have it, in that order. Close to the middle of the book is the poem Requiem in which the poet marks with eloquence the death of his father -- to whom the book is dedicated -- a man who 'died quietly, without fuss/In a room drenched with apocalyptic light'. Towards the end of the poem is a description of the 'sleek polished machine' that 'Drew a line through his life'. In this and other poems, Johnston stands small humanity against a big universe and finds in that meeting a soulfulness and poignancy, the recognition of our limits as biological creatures and the necessity to celebrate the everyday things that set us apart from each other. Overall, the tone is one of longing and wistfulness, although there are flashes of joy. Here is My Love Asleep, in its entirety: All the daft day's riot falters here The lake of her silence is deep, motionless and clear Unlike my own small well of wide-eyed spite Perturbed, unfathomable, black as a winter's night. It's a cool example of the poet's envy of others' contentment, which is not to say that this is a bad thing. It's poetic detachment at work to good effect. Elsewhere, Johnston celebrates Galway, where he lives, and 'unDublinised' midland villages, reminding the literati of the capital that there is life, and poetry, outside the Pale. As a counterpoint to this, Acquiring Culture takes on a half-satirical, half-in-cahoots look at a poet visiting one of those towns: 'a poet should at least wear a tie/And some of his poems, well, a child could write them.' Is it my imagination, or is a poet writing about poetry like a heavy metal band singing about rock'n'roll (No sleep till Hammersmith), or Truffaut making Day For Night? Such a subject matter always seems to me to be too self-conscious if handled badly but here, the poet does it well enough. The subject matter throughout this book is, however, broad and wide and the collection is all the better for it. Gathering speaks of Love (note capital) as 'a maggot grown from the festering of dead love in the bone.' The North Remembered recalls 'Dragging a lumpen sack of smugness after me/Into exile.' Flood describes 'Local politicians' who 'like hooded birds/Sat up in rowing boats and made themselves visible.' Johnston has an eye for intriguing detail: 'Your hair over a pillow, slivers/of winter sun on a frosted window' (from Breaking); chilling remembrance - of a boy drowning: 'where everyone could see/What was happening, but we never found him. (from Anticipation); and affectionate memoir: 'I'd walk to visit cousins, shortbread fingers/On the rim of a saucer, tea spilling over with dignity' (from The North Remembered). There is little in this book to shock or disturb but there are fine poems that grow better with age (This reviewer had longer to consider the book than many journalistic deadlines allow). Some of the earlier poems in the book seemed to be a verse too long. The punctuation leaves either a lot to be desired, or is intentional and, therefore, eccentric -- you have to read some sentences twice to realise that they have finished. But as the volume progresses, through the moving Requiem and on to the elegant closing poem Parting In Winter: 'We eat and drowse --/I feel closer/To what I will not, can not, know', the reader is left with a faint sense that the poet longs for a more uncomplicated age, while coming to terms with what the modern world demands and offers. It's an enjoyable read, too. And certain of the poems affected me, like a good movie or a haunting piece of music can. Now, over to you, the reader."