A while back we published “Molly Bloom’s Stream of Consciousness Ends in Flowers & Perfumed Breasts,” the soliloquy which closes the epic modernist tale Ulysses, by James Joyce. It seemed high time then to give some space to her poor cuckholded husband Leopold Bloom who, unlike his wife who prefers toast and cakes, has a taste for “the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” The below section opens the fourth episode, what’s known as the Calypso episode. It is our …
Tag: James Joyce
Molly Bloom’s Stream of Consciousness Ends in Flowers & Perfumed Breasts, Excerpt from Joyce’s Ulysses
As I mentioned in Corpse Flower Revisited, I’ve recently reread James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it is the nature of such an encyclopedic book, that each time one reads it, one finds new threads to pull, new aspects to admire. This time I was struck by Molly Bloom’s final words–the last words of the book–that are full of food and flowers, taste and smells–so many of our favorite things at Aromatica Poetica. From the bit of seedcake that she passes to …
Corpse Flower Revisited, Briefly in Bloom at the Denver Botanic Gardens 2018 * Essay * M. Leona Godin
The last few weeks have been intense and hard. My father passed away on August 19, the day after my birthday, and his services were held on my partner Alabaster’s birthday September 1. But my dad came into this world crashing a funeral–his father’s–and so the whole cycle of life seems contained in my dad’s own. Enter the corpse flower, and its day of bloom at the Denver Botanic Gardens on August 31, the morning of the day we were …