The widely published, Belfast-born poet and critic ranges across
styles and subjects in this sixth volume of verse, but he comes
back to one salient fact: his exile in Galway from the wartorn
North. Being "two-cultured," he worries if he's "two-faced," if, as
he suggests in the title poem, his "Tree North is always shifting"
and he will forever have "a hunger in the head" for that other half
of himself. Death pervades his local portraits: of an unpopular
drunk ("Curse"), of a quiet female violinist ("Clio"), of his
father ("Requiem") and of poet George MacBeth ("Language Classes"),
from whom Johnston derives his aesthetic of "ragged syntax and
eccentric verbs." His simple verses - his drinking songs, his
feminine-rhyming ditties - observe routine things: a girl asleep,
young lovers, seafaring, flowers. But his love poems cloy, with
treacly sentiment and greeting-card vocabulary. At his best,
Johnston seeks a sort of self-negation and aspires to a Joycean
level of exile and silence. Too often, though, the professional
Irishman gets the better of him and plays itself out in unmemorable
verse. (Kirkus Reviews)
"I can't begin to say what brought me here, " confesses the
narrator of Mid-century, an American lexicographer, down on his
luck, who turns to Ireland in hopes of finding solace in the
landscape and a respite in Ireland's wartime neutrality. Seeking
definitions in a culture which resists them, he discovers in Irish
history a refraction of his fortunes and obsessions. Mid-century
tells an engrossing story of defeat and recovery, of devastation
and spiritual renewal. Earlier versions of some of these poems
first appeared in Sewane Review, Seneca Review, and Chelsea.
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