The speaker here is the River Liffey, dying this drizzly morning into the cold Irish Sea below Howth while recirculating as rain on her headwaters. The Liffey represents Joyce’s muse and collaborator – his daughter, Lucia. The seventeen years he spent writing the book were also spent watching her swallowed alive down the maw of schizophrenia. Trying every known treatment to save her, he also transmogrified the punny multilingual patois they spoke together into 628 pages of musical dream-language. When the Nazi occupation of France forced her to be evacuated to asylums out of reach of her family, Joyce lamented, ‘I have no idea where my daughter is.’ They never saw each other again. My son, James, died in a mental-health facility, out of reach of my ability to comfort him. He was a guitarist, a point guard, a funny and affectionate brother till his illness overwhelmed him. I don’t believe in souls, but there’s an abscess in mine where he lives.
What do You think about Poems That Make Grown Men Cry?
