Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘James Joyce’

When I First Read Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 17, 2022| 4 Comments »


            a musing on Bloomsday, June 16


That was the first time
I fully understood
the sway of yes—
how what Joyce called
“the female word”
could seduce, could affirm,
could acquiesce,
could mountain flower,
could undress a grown man,
could slowly caress
others’ tenderest parts,
could trespass like perfume,
could rewrite the past.
Joyce said it signaled
“the end of all resistance,”
and I who tried
to be good, to be tame,
to do right, read Molly
and lusted to be
the one in the red yes
who lives with abandon
and recklessness,
and yes, I thought, yes
I could live into yes,
I slipped into the word
like a silken digression,
and thirty years later,
I still dream in yes,
my heart beating mad,
a riotous clash
when I yes, pulse with yes
did it enter you, too,
this radiant yes,
beating yes,
oh this yes.

Read Full Post »

The Art of Saying Yes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 2, 2014| 3 Comments »

Dear James Joyce, I will come out and say it,
I have forgotten you. Not your name, of course,
and not my general impression of your greatness.
In fact, more than anything I recall you are great,
how I celebrated you, wrote papers praising your genius.
But I do not recall why. I remember more of Andy McTaggert’s
second-grade doggerel than I do of you.
In fact, I can still sing all three verses of Andy’s song
about Herman the Heron, some ridiculous ditty he made up
and taught to me on the merry go round. And all I recall
of the hundreds of brilliant pages of your masterpiece Ulysses
is “yes, yes, yes, I say yes, yes,”
and that Guinness is good as mother’s milk.
It would be embarrassing, James, if I were inclined
to be embarrassed. But no. I am accustomed
to losing things, even things that have been
essential to me. Words I thought I would never forget,
I have lost. Men I thought I would always love,
I have gone for months, even years, without even once thinking
their names. James. You were my everything for a time.
And now, I see your name and think oh, yes, I knew
you once, could name your characters and all your techniques.
I knew where you were born and when and who you married
and what your dad telegraphed you when your mother fell ill. And then
the phone rings or I look out the window, and I am here
at the late end of autumn, saying yes to whoever
it is on the other end of the line, saying yes to the field
all golden and high, saying yes to the one shining crow that flies
without moving its wings from one bare tree to another.

Read Full Post »