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Poet: Margaret Atwood
Poem: Siren Song
Volume: Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama
Year: Published/Written in 1974
Comment 19 of 19, added on May 10th, 2006 at 3:42 PM.
Good poem, it confused me though...
Randa Gill from United States
Comment 18 of 19, added on April 22nd, 2006 at 7:27 PM.
I fell in love with this "sly" poem the first day I saw it in my literature text book. I love how the reader of the poem is convinced into sympathising with the speaker, and is seduced by the promise of hearing her famous song; in the end the reader is betrayed by the siren, who shrugs her shoulders and says "it is a boring song, but it works every time". We can't exactly say we wern't warned- we read on despite the "bleached skulls" in the second stanza.
I was reading a book by Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride, which had a passage which I thought expanded upon the idea of the poem. The villaness of the book is Zenia, who seduces and then abandons the men of her three friends, effectively destroying them. One charectar wants to know what gives this seductrice such power over men. It must lie, she surmises, in telling the man that he is unique, that only he understands her and can save her. Then Zenia turns the tables and shows them that the opposite is true, that they are nothing special.
This charectar goes through a variety of professions and roles over the course of the book- unlike the speaker of the poem, who is stuck in her bird suit- but you get the sense by the end of the book that she has only one role she is really able to play, and like the sirens she is bored of it.
Ed the Adder from Canada
Comment 17 of 19, added on April 13th, 2006 at 2:36 PM.
I think that the most intriguing comment I have read said that the whole poem is the song of the sirens. This almost makes sense, and yet I have to argue against it. The siren's voice throughout the poem is secretive, alluring, even hopefull ,but at the end she gives up and says "Alas it is a boring song but it works every time." Without this line I would possibly agree that the poem in its entirety addresses a sailor, but this line is her weakness, and it exposes her true vulnrability. If her chivalrous hero were to hear that he had been so cunningly tricked, would he really come and save her? The reader now knows it, and thus realizes just how simple and obvious it is to pull the blinds over the eyes of a male ,and possibly send them to their deaths. (Males, please don't get offended, I'm just going to the extreme with Atwood's social commentary).
Sara from United States
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Good poem, it confused me though...
Randa Gill from United States