With the First Dream of Fire They Hunt the Cold - Softcover

Joyce, Trevor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 090756237X ISBN 13: 9780907562375

Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2003

Synopsis

Poetry. Trevor Joyce is one of those Irish poets, in the line of James Clarence Mangan, Brian Coffey, and Samuel Beckett, whose work explores new fields and modes rather than dwelling in the familiar. "He is a writer of great integrity and originality, his writing is both exciting and assured and his way of looking at the world is not arcane" - J.C.C. Mays, The Recorder. "His characteristic strengths are astonishing graces of language: he can fuse intricate argument with plain and lovely images and make all moving" - Eavan Boland, Irish Times.

About this title

About the Author

Trevor Joyce (born 26 October 1947) is an Irish poet, born in Dublin. He co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin in 1967 and was a founding editor of NWP's The Lace Curtain; A Magazine of Poetry and Criticism in 1968. Early books include Sole Glum Trek (1967), Watches (1968), Pentahedron (1972) and The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine (1976). The last of these is a version of the Middle-Irish Buile Shuibhne, well known from Seamus Heaney's later translation in Sweeney Astray (1983). After a near-total silence for twenty years, he resumed publishing in 1995 with stone floods, followed by Syzygy and Without Asylum (1998).

Review

"I find myself almost surprised, after having lived with this book for several months, at how difficult I now find it to think of the landscape of contemporary poetry without this body of work. It is a book that deserves to find a wide and diverse readership." Nate Dorward, Chicago Review) "This book collects work since 1966, but about three-quarters of it consists of poems written in the last seven or so years, witness to a quite remarkable flowering of Joyce's talent. The work is consistently interesting, formally engaging, wide-ranging and risky: altogether an unmissable collection." (Peter Sirr, Poetry Ireland Review) "The later poems in With the first dream of fire are extraordinary ... Joyce's inventiveness, restlessness, range - these qualities in operation and not simply packaged in last year's Christmas wrapping - are simply stunning. The title of this review ['with the fire in him now'] is borrowed from Krapp's Last Tape. 'Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back. [Krapp motionless staring before him. The tape runs on in silence.]' Krapp's closing words test an actor's control at the limits of ability; a prick of compromise deflates pretension entirely. Joyce's writing produces that same white sound again and again, which is the highest praise." (J.C.C. Mays, Dublin Review)

Edition details

• Publisher: Shearsman Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 090756237X
• ISBN 13: 9780907562375
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 244