The final line of “Like Spinning Plates” reads:
Our bodies floating down the muddy river.
Line 6 of “How to Disappear Completely” reads:
I float down the Liffey.
Again, a body floating down a river. In James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle, the wife of H. C. Earwicker, the major male character, personifies the River Liffey, which flows from the Wicklow Mountains to the Irish Sea. On old maps, the Liffey was called “Anna Liffey”, from the Irish Gaelic word “amhain” for river. See also message 10.
Read the original New York Times book review for Finnegan’s Wake here.