bloom in dublin - primary image
this image is copyrighted. do not reproduce without permission.

bloom in dublin is an 18-poem autobiography which i gave my mom several years ago. since then i have edited all the poems, added four addendum stories and now have completely illustrated the whole work. the entire work is 25 panels in all, and each panel is 21” X 15." i should complicate this right now by adding that within the actual "story" panel itself, there are 3 distinct images which make up that panel -- the core image from a photograph of mine of chinese scroll (see below), the poem nested into a smaller version of the core image, and a background collage of the various renditions of the core image. the exception in all of this, size-wise, is the poem nested into a smaller version of the core image (it's 12" X 9").

i've uploaded 5 panels from this piece. bloom refers to not just the flower, but also to james joyce's protagonist leopold bloom. ulysses is set in dublin (hence bloom being set in dublin) and having been raised proudly irish, on top of my one-day-with-out-a-map-finding-leopold-bloom's-fictional-home-when-in-dublin, it all just made sense. the half-way point of the 18 poems is the shortest poem i have ever written (2 lines, 11 words) while the final poem of the 18 is the longest of all of them in this piece (rewritten to about three times the original length).

the core image for all 25 panels is a photograph of mine of a 2-panel chinese scroll painting. i am sincerely indebted to mrs. ogata for allowing me the chance to photograph it. i would be remiss if i didn't acknowledge my mom's acquiescing and letting me break our agreement about when this poem/image could be seen by anyone other than the two of us. the subject matter of the poem (as a whole poem in 22 pieces) is personal, honest and at times not very pleasant, but it is the what it is to be human.