“I always liked poetry”

Molly Bloom thinks: Her husband, a poet? Nah. But what about Stephen Dedalus? From the “Penelope” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922.)

A few notes:

~ “I thought he was a poet”: Leopold Bloom has written at least two poems, one for a contest when he was a boy, another, an acrostic, for Molly, February 14, 1888:

Poets oft have sung in rhyme
Of music sweet their praise divine.
Let them hymn it nine times nine.
Dearer far than song or wine.
You are mine. The world is mine.

~ Milly: the Blooms’ daughter.

~ “what age was he then at Dillons”: Molly saw little Stephen at Mat Dillon’s years ago. Could it have been at the same party where she and Bloom first met?

~ “Im not too old for him”: Molly will be thirty-four in September 1904. Stephen is twenty-two.

~ “Eppss”: Epps’s Cocoa, “the creature cocoa.”

~ Goodwin: Professor Goodwin, a pianist, at one time Molly’s accompanist. “Dreadful old case,” as Bloom remembers him.

~ John Jameson: Irish whiskey.

~ “Europa point”: Europa Point, the southermost point of Gibraltar. Molly was born on Gibraltar.

~ “where softly sighs of love the light guitar”: from “In Old Madrid,” words by G. Clifton Bingham, music by Henry Trotère. It begins,

Long years ago, in old Madrid,
Where softly sighs of love the light guitar,
Two sparkling eyes a lattice hid,
Two eyes as darkly bright as love’s own star!

Here’s a 1908 recording. Imagine that Molly is singing. Bingham also wrote the words to “Love’s Old Sweet Song,” a song that runs through the novel.

~ Tarifa: “a Spanish municipality in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia” (Wikipedia) .

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)