J is for Joyce

                                                                                

                                              J is for Joyce

From the clear prose of his short story collection Dubliners (1914) and stream-of-consciousness novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), to the exuberant feast of language – puns, allusions, figures of speech, argot – of his masterpieces Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), James Joyce changed world literature while putting Irish literature on the map.

Joyce is less well known for his poems, like this one, written July 6, 1927, and published in Pomes, Penyeach:

On the Beach at Fontana

Wind whines and whines the shingle,

The crazy pierstakes groan;

A senile sea numbers each single

Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder

Grey sea I wrap him warm

And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder

And boyish arm.

Around us fear, descending

Darkness of fear above

And in my heart how deep unending

Ache of love!