And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life, and never understand. – Finnegans Wake
You may have heard of Bloomsday – June 16th, the single day covered in detail in the 643-page novel by James Joyce, Ulysses. Fans of the novel show up bright and early June 16th at the James Joyce Center to start their day visiting each site in Dublin mentioned in the novel.
Maybe you’ve read Ulysses, maybe you’ve been avoiding it all your life. I finally read the book as a COVID project. It turned out to be worth the effort. So much so, I was quite keen to visit Dublin on June 16th. My husband and I traveled with dear friends, who are both professional photographers. He was along for the ride, she was working on a Dublin project for The Little Museum of Dublin and wanted photographs of Bloomsday.
For me, the author armed with little more than an iPhone, I wanted something fun, so I brought along a James Joyce Finger puppet. I can’t remember WHY I own a James Joyce finger puppet, likely a gift from a friend who knew I’d recognize the puppet as a famous author.
Both my husband and our friends were mortified by this undignified approach to a famous novel, except that as the day wore on, every one of them participated in holding the puppet while I cataloged Joyce’s rove around Dublin.
Inspired by my week in Dublin, and armed with my copy of the Cambridge Centenary Ulysses (a facsimile of the original novel published by Sylvia Beach), I dove deeply into Ulysses and created poems based on the collected words culled from each of the 18 episodes. The short poems give space, consideration, and a different, yet insightful interpretation of this important book, simply by re-purposing the words.
It is a bold project, but filled with the rapture of sharing a collection of poetry I don’t fully understand.

Words by James Joyce, Ulysses Circe Episode – 3
Hear world beauty
First pulp women
Royal jobs watched glowingly
Perfect soul is thought sad music
Shoot trouble, a reform example lost
Not lucky, after a moment, forgotten
The end is round and open
Summer grieves its hot choices
Her scream weak like fool’s delights
This event howled, a cruel secret
Darts from half to bachelor arms.
