Episode 84
August 15, 2025

The Collected Poems of Wallace StevensFinnegans Wake

Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

                   It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Chris and Suzanne both recently celebrated a big round birthday, and so they each decided to revisit something that they loved when they were younger. Suzanne returns to The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (with its interest in forms and philosophical riddles), and Chris revisits James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake (with its cacophany of language and dream logic). They also talk about their own creative processes — because one of them has just put something out into the world...

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84. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens / Finnegans Wake.

The Spouter-Inn The poetry of Wallace Stevens and James Joyce’s experimental novel Finnegans Wake. More episodes

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Show Notes.

Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Audiobook coming in May 2026.

James Joyce: Finnegans Wake. Audiobook. Online at the James Joyce Digital Archive.

The Minor Thirds (i.e., Chris and friends): The New Songs is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and more. Enjoy!

Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Stratford Festival.

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, illustrated by John Steuart Curry. (Our episode on Leaves of Grass.)

Alice B. Toklas: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.

Yasmin Zaher: The Coin.

Sandra Boynton: The Going to Bed Book.

Suzanne Conklin Akbari, ed.: How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page (book designed by Chris Piuma).

Poems by Wallace Stevens mentioned in this episode:

Andrew Marvell: The Garden.

Walt Whitman: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.

Our episodes on William Carlos Williams and Andrew Marvell.

We don’t normally include the quote from an episode’s second book, but it helps to be able to read along with this one, so here it is:

Soe? La! Lamfadar's arm it has cocoincidences. You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night’s sleep? You may so. It is just, it is just about to, it is just about to rolywholyover. Svapnasvap. Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold in tittletell tattle.

Our episode on Ulysses.

The sections Chris recommends for those starting to dip into the Wake:

  • I.8 (the most famous section: two washerwomen sharing gossip about Anna Livia Plurabelle)
  • I.7 (a discussion of Shem the Penman; Joyce pokes a bit of fun at himself)
  • II.4 (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John talk about Tristam and Isolde)
  • III.1 (Shaun the Postman, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is asked questions about the letter he's carrying; the second half of the chapter has a retelling of The Ondt and the Gracehoper)
  • IV (dawn breaks in the final chapter, which ends with ALP reading her letter, trying to wake up HCE, and sort of fading into the Liffey, and then into the ocean)

A video tour of Chapelizod from 1988.

Giambattista Vico: The New Science.

Samuel Beckett et al.: Our Exagmination Round His Factification For Incamination Of Work In Progress. (Work In Progress was the working title of Finnegans Wake.)

Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson: A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.

William York Tindall: A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake.

John Bishop: Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake is an interesting reading of how the book interprets dreams.

The Joyce Foundation has a list of books on the Wake.

And there are lots of online guides and resources for Finnegans Wake, too! Chris found FinWake.com and The James Joyce Digital Archive particularly useful.

John Cage: Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake.

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