Circe

It's
the animals I'm afraid of, they werent' part of the bargain,
in fact you didn't mention them, they may transform the-
selves back into men. Am I really immortal, does the sun
care, when you leave will you give me back the words? Don't
evade, don't pretend you won't leave after all: you leave in
the story and the story is ruthless.
Margaret Atwood

What is the motivation for this witch, granddaughter of the sun? Why does she enchant
men into animals? These poems imagine various answers. Margaret Atwood assumes not
only that she worries about her future after Odysseus sails away but also that she knows
herself to be a character in a fictional narrative.

Literature

Arnold, Matthew. "The Strayed Reveller." 1849.

Ascham, Roger."The First Book for the Youth."TheSchoolmaster. [A description of Circe
and the Italianate gentleman.]

Atwood, Margaret. "Circe/Mud Poems."Selected P oems. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1976. 201-223.

Cawein, Madison. "Circe" and "Moly."Intimat onsofthe Beautif ul and Poems. New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894. 180-82, 84-85.

Dehn, Paul. "What Ulysses Said to Circe on the Beach of Aeaea."Erot cPoetry:The L yrics,
Ballads, Idyls andEpics of L ove—Classicalto Contemporary. Foreword Stephen
Spender. Random House, 1963. 350-51.

De Tabley, Lord. "Circe."Vict orianLi erature: P oetry. Ed. Donald Gr ay and G.B.
Tennyson. Macmillan, 1976.

Dobson, Austin. "The Prayer of the Swine to Circe."TheEnglishmaninGreece. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1910. 295-98.

Duffy, Carol Ann. "Circe."Ti mes L terarySupplement24 July 1998: 23.

Erskine, John.”Circe and the Higher Life.”Penelope’s M an: TheHoming I nst nct.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1927. 91-126. [A novel.]

Gelli, G. B.Circe. 1549. Trans. Thomas Brown. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1963.[Fictional
dialogue.]

Gibson, William. "Circe." InThePoetry A nthology, 1912-1977. Ed. Daryl Hine and Joseph
Paris. Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Glück, Louise. "Circe's Power."Meadowlands. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1996. 37-38. [And
other Circe andOdysseypoems.]

Gunn, Thom. "Moly."Selected Poems1950- 1975. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979.
92-93.

H.D. "Circe." InPoems to Read A oud. Ed. Edward Hodnett. Norton, 1967.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Circe's Palace."Tanglewood T ales. InAWonder-B ook and
Tanglewood T ales. Illus. Stephen Reid. Philadelphia: David McKay, [n.d]. 258-87..

Hope, A[lec].D[erwent]. "Circe After the Painting by Dosso Dossi."InPoetry: Past and
Present Ed. Frank Brady and Martin Price. Harcourt, 1974.

Jong, Erica. "Henbane."Becoming L ght: Poems Newand Selected. New York:
HarperCollins, 1991. 260-62.

Kaschnitz, Marie Luise.Circe's Mountain:Storiesby Marie Luise Kaschni z. Trans. Lisel
Mueller . Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1990. 109-128.

Kyger, Joanne. "The Pigs for Circe in May." 1970.InThePostmoderns. 320-21.

Kell, Richard. "Circe."

Lattimore, Richmond. "Of Seven Sins: Lust." The Stride of Time. Ann Arbor: U of
Michigan P, 1966. 38.

---. "Notes from the Odyssey: Circe." Poems from Three Decades.New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1972. 235.

Levine, Jeffrey. “It Turns out Circe Has Something of a Past.” The Missouri ReviewVol.
22.1 (1998): 76. [Winner, in a group with two poems about Ulysses, one about
Penelope, and one about Telemachus, of the Larry Levis Editor’s Prize.]

Longley, Michael. "Circe." No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968.Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan, 1969. 30. [in Nausicaa folder]

Lowell, Robert. "Ulysses and Circe."DaybyDay. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1977.

MacNeice, Louis. "Circe."OxfordBookofModern V erse, 1250-1918. Oxford UP, 1939.

Macpherson, Jay. "Aiaia."Poems T wiceTol d:The Boatman & WelcomingDi saster.
Toronto: Oxford UP, 1981. 31.

May, Beulah. "Circe."Sophist -Cats:Poems for Cat Lovers.

Montgomery, Stuart. "Circe." London: Fulcrum, 1969.

Morley, Christopher. "Forever Ambrosia."

Pound, Ezra. Canto I.[More briefly in Canto XX.]

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. "The Wine of Circe."Poems andTranslat ons, 1850-1870. London:
Oxford UP, 1926.

Saxe, John Godfrey. "The Spell of Circe." The Poetical Works of John Godfrey Saxe.
Boston: Houghton, 18859. 198-99.

Selig, Richard. "The Island: November 1953."Poems.Dublin: Dolmen, 1962. 43-44.

Swan, Emma. "Circe's Song." Partisan Review 18.3 (1951): 321-22.

Welty, Eudora. "Circe."Collects Stories. 531-37.

Williams, Williams Carlos. "Circe."

Wright, Merle St. Croix. "The Immortal Circe." Ignis Ardens. New York: Harold Vinal,
1926. 88.

Criticism

Arrington, Carl Wayne. "Madonna in Bloom, Circe at Her Loom." Time20 May 1990:
56-58.

Porter, Katherine Anne. "A Defense of Circe." The Collected Essays and Occasional
Writings of Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Delacorte, 1923. 133-40.

Yarnall, Judith. Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1994. 245pp.