Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach and Other Poems

James Joyce, the author of the groundbreaking novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake , led the vanguard of twentieth-century fiction. He also prided himself on his verse, from his earliest writing and his debut book to poetic qualities in his prose. This volume combines two of Joyce's poetry books in their entirety and two additional poems. Joyce based some of the thirty-six lyrical love poems in Chamber Music (1907) on songs; selections have been set to music by a variety of composers, including Sonic Youth and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Pomes Penyeach (1927) features "real poetry--perhaps some of the purest of our time" that is "unmistakably original," in the words of one contemporaneous review. "The Holy Office" (1905) and "Gas from a Burner" (1912) are autobiographical and satirical and are longer than the other poems.