What are you reading?

[Héctor]

To many, James Joyce is simply the greatest novelist of the twentieth century. Scholars have pored over every minutia of his public and private life from utility bills to deeply personal letters in search of new insights into his life and work. Yet, for the most part, they have paid scant attention to the two volumes of poetry he published.
The nine contributors to The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsidered convincingly challenge the critical consensus that Joyce’s poetry is inferior to his prose. They reveal how his poems provide entries into Joyce's most personal and intimate thoughts and ideas. They also demonstrate that Joyce's poetic explorations--of the nature of knowledge, sexual intimacy, the changing quality of love, the relations between writing and music, and the religious dimensions of the human experience--were fundamental to his development as a writer of prose. This exciting new work is sure to spark new interest in Joyce's poetry, and will become an essential and indispensable resource for students and scholars of his life and work.

The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsidered, 2012

[Tarantella]

Thank you for that information on Joyce, Hector. (This forum continually amazes me with its contributors' depth of knowledge!! There's just NO WAY in my everyday life I'd come across such a wealth of discussion - especially since I retired from teaching - comparatively recently. Even then, one had to pick one's discussion partners carefully.)

I do not know Joyce's poetry as I'm still wading very ambivalently through Sylvia Plath. One can only move in small steps because she is so difficult and her imagery so complex.

But it's great to see further investigations into a great literary figure like Joyce and absolutely right to concentrate on fraught ideas about love and passion and - what I'm convinced about in my later years - the ambivalence of long-term relationships and the whole notion of sexuality. (I've just had this very discussion with somebody on a private email, co-incidentally. It's 8.45am here and I haven't even unpacked the dishwasher!!)

[Balthazar]

I've never found anything compelling about Joyce's poetry. It just lacks the allusive complexity and crazed wit of his prose. The wacky verse in the Wake, at times, even seems to mock Joyce's own attempts at poetry:

— My God, alas, that dear olt tumtum home
Whereof in youthfood port I preyed
Amook the verdigrassy convict vallsall dazes.
And cloitered for amourmeant in thy boosome shede!

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

This forum continually amazes me with its contributors' depth of knowledge!!

Great isn't it? And it's such an innocent activity -- strangers from across the globe chattering on the interweb. But I miss letter-writing and receiving letters... the excitement when they plopped onto the doormat and you recognised the handwriting...

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by Philidor

Great isn't it? And it's such an innocent activity -- strangers from across the globe chattering on the interweb. But I miss letter-writing and receiving letters... the excitement when they plopped onto the doormat and you recognised the handwriting...

What, like the frisson of excitement when that fat bloody winter gas bill plops (like an unwelcome dog turd) on my doormat? Luckily, I don't have a doormat (living in an apartment as I do); I have to go down to the ground floor letter box for that particular parcel of joy.

[haydnguy]

This book on Alban Berg. Going to be listening to his music along with it.

[Balthazar]

So I finally finished Finnegans Wake and joined the, um, exclusive club of people who've read the book cover to cover. It was a labor of love, but often times a true labor. You can't help but be humbled when you're trying to get into the mind of an author as erudite as Joyce.

As a reward, I just ordered a copy of the new Restored Finnegans Wake, the product of decades of work by Joyce scholars and published by Penguin Classics.

[Green Knight]

Tim Flannery--The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

[ReinerTorheit]

I'm reading an anthology of new Russian science-fiction short stories... well, I'm reading them because I'm translating them for a publisher, so I'm being paid to read them

[Green Knight]

Originally Posted by ReinerTorheit

I'm reading an anthology of new Russian science-fiction short stories... well, I'm reading them because I'm translating them for a publisher, so I'm being paid to read them

That really sounds fascinating! Anybody in there who reminds you of H.G. Wells or Jules Verne?