July 17, 2025
Stream of consciousness

Among the many poetic and literary examples of stream-of-consciousness writing, perhaps the most famous are Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that follows Clarissa Dalloway throughout a single day in London, using stream of consciousness to reveal her thoughts, memories, and perceptions as she prepares for a party, and James Joyce's Ulysses, considered a landmark work of modernist literature. Ulysses employs stream of consciousness to explore the inner lives of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom over the course of a single day in Dublin.

William Faulkner,  Marcel Proust, Dorothy Richardson, and Samuel Beckett are also considered masters of the style.

I have employed Stream of Consciousness in my poetry before but I am as a babe in the woods compared to the luminaries above.

For a good example of "streaming" read Molly Bloom’s final words (Ulysses) –the last words of the book. 

https://www.aromaticapoetica.com/2018/10/22/molly-blooms-stream-of-consciousness-ends-in-flowers-perfumed-breasts-excerpt-from-joyces-ulysses/#:~:text=Molly%20Bloom's%20Stream%20of%20Consciousness,from%20Joyce's%20Ulysses%20%2D%20Aromatica%20Poetica