Penguin Modern Classics: Poems

It is only James Joyce''s towering genius as a novelist that has led to his comparative neglect as a poet. And yet his poems not only occupy a pivotal position in Joyce''s career, they are also magnificently assured achievements in their own right. ''Chamber Music'' is an extraordinary début, fusing a broad swathe of styles with characteristically sharp irony and joyful verbal exuberance. ''Pomes Penyeach'' confronts painful personal issues of adultery, jealousy and betrayal and so paves the way for the more detached and fully realized treatment of these feelings in Joyce''s masterpiece, Ulysses. Also included here is ''Ecce Puer'', written for his new-born grandson, as well as juvenilia, satires, translations, limericks and a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.