What was the goal of transforming the chapters into a poetic form?
To show that style and form are irrelevant to plot and that a narrative, regardless of the subject, can be conveyed in any manner as long as the reader gleans a sense of direction.
Poetic form—but is this poetry?
A conversation is being conducted between a formless questioner who was birthed by the answerer who is busy typing this sentence.
Fair enough, what is going on in Ithaca?
The literary avatars of Odysseus and Telemachus have returned to Bloom's home. Keyless, Bloom shadows over his fence to gain entrance for a hydrophobic Stephen who refuses the offer of a shower. Then a ponderous encompa**ing of Dublin's water system. Nostalgia layers frames of the past over the two and reveals two previous meetings. They urinate together, one considering Christ's circumcision, the other considering different states of minds that occupied his subconscious throughout the day.
Is there fulfillment in the father/son relationship we have been rooting for?
Not at all. A bell peals with Stephen's footsteps as he walks away with Bloom's hopes, leaving the latter as a little man standing at the door frame, cold.
What does Bloom do next?
Enters his bedroom and visually catalogues the furniture while giving the reader extraneous information of significances attached to certain pieces. One second drawer in particular contained documets of high importance including Bloom's birth certificate, a certificate showing possession of a certain Canadian stock, also an insurance policy of some sort for Milly Bloom, and several other documents.
Where is Rudolf Bloom in all this?
As a drifting figment of the past settling in letter form, ready to be re-read and invoke sentiments of loss that memory opens to remind man of his ultimate flaw: mortality.
How does the chapter end?
With a kiss to a white hill, with a list of potential paramours, with a discussion between a drowsy Molly and sleepy Bloom, the discussion's main focus being the latter's excursions through town. Night, like a roc egg, encapsules the tired Bloom who becomes Sinbad and sets out on the black waters of sleep.