In this episode, Abby Walthausen interviews Peter Orner, fiction writer and professor of English and Creative writing at Dartmouth College, for a special Bloomsday episode. For memory, they offer up James Joyce's "On the Beach at Fontana," a poem from a tiny chapbook called Pomes Penyeach, which offers a window into Joyce's family life in Trieste during the period when he was writing his masterpiece Ulysses.Recitation begins at 35:20On the Beach at FontanaWind whines and whines the shingle,The crazy pierstakes groan;A senile sea numbers each singleSlimesilvered stone.From whining wind and colderGrey sea I wrap him warmAnd touch his trembling fineboned shoulderAnd boyish arm.Around us fear, descendingDarkness of fear aboveAnd in my heart how deep unendingAche of love!

On the Beach at FontanaWind whines and whines the shingle,The crazy pierstakes groan;A senile sea numbers each singleSlimesilvered stone.From whining wind and colderGrey sea I wrap him warmAnd touch his trembling fineboned shoulderAnd boyish arm.Around us fear, descendingDarkness of fear aboveAnd in my heart how deep unendingAche of love!

"A Lovely Wallpaper" offers up guided memorizations, featuring a new poem each episode. Proposing
            memory work as a challenge to the ephemeral language of our moment, host Abby delivers an
            exploration of each new poem in two parts. In the first act, she chats with a guest about poetry and memory.
            In the second act, she presents the episode's poem, as read by her guest, in a special format designed to
            work as a roadmap to learning it by heart.