I have just been reading 'Trem Neul' from 1999 again and coming
more to terms with it. (It is the piece from the 90s I prefer).
It seems like vaguely impersonal voices emerging from a Galway
landscape and must be rated a technical success. The impersonality
is enforced by the lack of description of speaker who must be
identified from content. Would this description be corrrect?
It also made me think of Beckett. I think my problem with
'Trem Neul' in previous readings was that I was reading the
entire book in one bash. JUst picking it out alone vastly
improves it because the brain is not so tired. (It is a
long book for poetry). I think some of the voices more
succesful than others, but that is to be expected .
The same goes for the prose passages. What sustains
the piece overall is Trevor's language. It gives personality
to the impersonality. I wish I could write like that.     c


Douglas Clark, Bath, England           mailto: [log in to unmask]
Lynx: Poetry from Bath  ..........  http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html

On Sat, 8 Sep 2001, Trevor Joyce wrote:

> Douglas,
>
> No problem. If everyone liked everything in the book, I'd start getting
> worried. I've moved as I have done because of my own imperatives; to assume
> that those imperatives are universal would be both arrogant and stupid on
> my part, I reckon. Well, even more arrogant and stupid than I already know
> myself to be capable of.
>
> Remember, though, that between the Pentahedron period and 'the work from
> the 90s', I had an almost twenty-year silence. I think you can infer from
> that that I felt there were pretty serious problems for me with continuing
> what I'd been doing, though I *was* satisfied with a reasonable amount of
> it (otherwise it wouldn't figure in the collected). I needed to reassess
> completely what I was doing, and find new solutions, new routes to
> understanding and expression, and yes, those new solutions, when I found
> them, turned out to be quite a change from what I'd done before.
>
> In answer to your question, no, I don't write (primarily) for academics,
> though if academics enjoy what I do, then good! My criteria for success are
> various and shifting. I like Randolph's earlier remark that he found some
> of the work beautiful. That matters to me. So does emotional impact: if I
> feel something I write is emotionally barren, then I dump it, no matter how
> clever or successful in other terms. But is it necessary that you find
> something I write either beautiful or moving just because I feel it to be?
> I don't see that as being part of the rule-book.
>
> One of the recent comments I've most liked about some of my recent stuff
> came from an old friend. She said she'd tried reading a particular piece
> several times, but had so far been unable to finish it. I said this
> intrigued me, and asked her what the dynamic was. She said she found
> herself drawn in by the piece, and although she didn't 'understand it' she
> felt moved and altered by it, but she was prevented from finishing it by
> the fact that it started a sort of buzzing in her head - a noise almost
> physically experienced. Each time, she had to leave the poem down, but each
> time she came back to it. It's for people like her that I write.
>
> So, let's both count it a bonus that you like the early stuff, and we'll
> see what this next millennium holds, okay?
>
> Best wishes (and thanks for the straight talk),
>
> Trevor
>
> >Trevor knows I have the book so I feel I must make some comment.
> >He already knows my high opinion of the quality of his language
> >and that holds for the book. I really enjoyed the first two sections
> >being 'Sweeney' and 'Pentahedron...'. But then we gradually parted
> >company until I found the work from the 90s very much a waste of
> >time. I was very sad about this. I just re-read the book to
> >double-check myself. There is no doubt about Trevor's ability.
> >The question is who does he want to read him? Academics?
> >Sorry about that but it would have been even ruder not to comment.
> >
> >
> >
> >Douglas Clark, Bath, England           mailto: [log in to unmask]
> >Lynx: Poetry from Bath  ..........  http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
>