Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941) led the vanguard of twentieth-century fiction, and his experimental use of language and stream of consciousness continues to captivate, intrigue, and influence readers and writers. Universally known for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939), Joyce was also a lyric poet and based some of his poems on music. Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, the band Sonic Youth, and composers Samuel Barber and Ross Lee Finney have musically adapted his poems. This volume combines two of Joyce's poetry books - Chamber Music (1907), a collection of thirty-six love poems, and Pomes Penyeach (1927), which features thirteen poems - with two longer poems by Joyce, "The Holy Office" and "Gas from a Burner."

Originally damned as obscure and obscene, Joyce's masterpiece now stands as one of the great literary achievements of the 20th century. Loosely based on the Odyssey, it follows Leopold Bloom and other Dubliners through a seemingly ordinary summer day and night in 1904 - a typical day, transformed by Joyce's narrative powers into an epic celebration of life.