This document discusses different perspectives on considering James Joyce as a poet. It summarizes three main views: 1) Harry Levin's view that Joyce was a "merely competent poet" whose poetry served as practice for his great fiction works. 2) A. Walton Litz's view that Joyce was "first and last a poet" whose deepest emotions emerged through poetry, though he had to abandon it for more objective fiction. 3) Robert Scholes' argument that Joyce aimed to be an Irish poet and that his poems should not be limited to biographical interpretation alone. The document goes on to discuss viewing Joyce as a specifically Irish poet and as a modernist poet, noting Ez