Bloomsday on the Raritan
2017
Bloomsday Another one has come. 113 years after the original?
I remember one where I read one of Joyce’s poems from the small collection - not ‘Cantos’ as that is Pound. Forget what they were called… “Chamber Music”?
Remember a line from what I read:
“Softly to undo the snood/ Which is the sign of maidenhood”
It was at Olde York Books probably. On French Street across from the Magyar bank and next to a seedy looking bar which was the CBGB of New Brunswick. I can’t remember the name of the woman who ran the bookstore. On the one hand it was a marvelous place full of used books. And tuna cans which doubled as ashtrays as this was the 80s and people still smoked in public. The owner was about 60 years old and had a German sounding accent that would sometimes sound more French. She smoked thin small cigar-looking things and would tell stories, some vaguely believable about writers and artists she had known. Ginsberg when he came to give a reading stayed in the apartment above the store so she know some folks.
On this day folding chairs were lined up and cheap wine and cheaper cheese cubes were set out. We read through Joyce’s poems. One woman a local benefactor got up at some point in the proceedings and read her favorite Joyce poem: “Trees”
“I think I will never see/ A poem as lovely as a tree…” etc, etc
And my man Patrick James Walsh and I sat stunned not looking at each other for fear of bursting out in snot-busting laughter.
James Joyce Kilmer was our new catchphrase for a while…
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
In my memory of this there is humor but self-loathing as well. Not a happy place to be - student life in a depressed and seedy town. The aporia of being fortunate but not realizing it. Shabby student life with little money and a lot of resentment. But everything I needed.