In Rome s Wreck, Irish poet Trevor Joyce translates Edmund Spenser s earlier English translation of Joachim du Bellay s Les Antiquit s de Rome 1558 as The Ruines of Rome 1591 Rather than an interlingual translation, Joyce s is a translation from one English into another, subject to a singular constraint that it be completely done over into monosyllables The resultIn Rome s Wreck, Irish poet Trevor Joyce translates Edmund Spenser s earlier English translation of Joachim du Bellay s Les Antiquit s de Rome 1558 as The Ruines of Rome 1591 Rather than an interlingual translation, Joyce s is a translation from one English into another, subject to a singular constraint that it be completely done over into monosyllables The result is a colloquial yet uncanny undoing of Spenser s work and a postmodern meditation on fame and mortal decay.