Honoring Bloomsday Here at Molly's Irish Pub

Kathleen is frankly beside herself with glee. She is ramping up for Bloomsday, which as everyone knows, occurs on June 16 of every year. Here at the pub, we throw the house through the window for this annual holiday to honor that Bullock-befriending Bard, that ineluctable Irish son, James Joyce. His works, Ulysses, The Dubliners, Finnegans Wake, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are an important "must read."

True, the man spent most of his life in Italy, but you could tell by the angle of tilt of his rakish hat that he was an irreverent son of the Green Isles.

Bloomsday and Stephen's As Well Is One 24-hour Period

Wandering Dublin all day
Leopold keeps well out of the way
Of the adultery
Of some cad and Molly
Who are planning a roll in the hay.

Dedalus, artist, they say
Made a cow out of Queen Pasiphae
Who desired a bull
Who left her womb full
A hard thing to hide, by the way.

These limericks, arranged in no particular order, deal with themes from James Joyce's Opus Magnus, Ulysses. It is our intention at the pub to add to their quantity on an annual basis until Kathleen gets tired of writing them or until they are required for inclusion into a book. At that point, they will be arranged in proper order under the appropriate chapter title (for example, Wandering Rocks). It will be like crib notes on amphetamines.

King Minos was fit to be tied
So he locked Dedalus up inside
A labyrinth, plus
The man's son, Icarus
For the Minotaur to homicide.

That Dedalus, always creative,
Fashioned some wings, operative
But inexpertly done,
They would melt from the sun
Rend'ring Icarus, his son, terminative.

Ulysses, the book, paradigm
Of Homer's. You can't read one time
For James Joyce went wild
And complexity's child
Is the book of this Irish son's prime.

Forged in the smithy of soul
Joyce considered it his author-role
To craft, to create,
For his race, to dilate
A true conscience and still keep it droll.

Bloomsday in limerick form makes exceptional literacy fun. In honor of Bloomsday our James Joyce Society "throws the house through the window" (oddly enough, a Spanish saying, but it conveys the point aptly). Molly's Irish Pub is the place to be for this celebration of language and literature. Join us every year for an expanded list of limerick poems relating to Ulysses, or if you prefer the Latin, Odysseus.