Sirens

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.
W. H. Auden

Despite the mixed connotations of the word "siren," the image appears regularly in
contemporary culture. Only one example is the logo for Starbuck's Coffee. We, after all,
only have the word of that infamous liar Odysseus that the Sirens are fatal to those who
hear their song. Some of the poets listed below imagine otherwise.

Literature

Anonymous. "Laugh not fond foole cause I a face." Seventeenth Century Songs and
Lyrics.Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 1959. 211-12.

Atwood, Margaret. "Siren Song."

Austin, Annemarie. "Mermadonna." The Flaying of Marsyas. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Bloodaxe, 1995. 28.

---."The Mermaid Examined." The Flaying of Marsyas. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe,
1995. 26-27.

Cutts, John P. "Must I in My Most Hopefull Yeares." Seventeenth Century Songs and
Lyrics. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1959. 229.

Daniel, Samuel. "Vlisses and the Syren." Poems and A Defence of Ryme. Ed. Arthur
Colby Sprague. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1930, 1965. 161-63.

Di Prima, Diane. "Ode to Sirens." Selected Poems 1956-1976. Plainsfield, VT: North
Atlantic Books, 1977. 281-82.

Erskine, John. "The Sirens." Penelope's Man: The Homing Instinct. Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1927. 129-64. [A novel.]

Fowles, John. "During the Voyage." Poems.New York: Ecco, 1973. 88.

Graves, Robert. "The Sirens' Welcome to Cronos." Collected Poems. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1961. 257.

Jong, Erica. Middle Aged Lovers, II." Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected. New
York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Korn, Nicholas. "The Sirens." Classical Outlook (Winter 1997): 62.

Kunitz, Stanley. "A Spark of Laurel." The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1979. 146-47.

Lattimore, Richmond. "Sirens in the Aegean." Poems from Three Decades. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972. 238.

---. "Of Seven Sins: Sloth." The Stride of Time.Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1966.
33.

Lewis, C. Day. “Tenure.” The Whispering Roots and Other Poems. New York: Harper &
Row, 1970. 30-31.

Macpherson, Jay. "A Mermaid's Grave." Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming
Disaster.Toronto: Oxford UP, 1981. 58.

---. "Mermaid." Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster.Toronto:
Oxford UP, 1981. 46.

Oates, Joyce Carol. "The Sirens." Love and Its Derangements.Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State UP, 1970. 8-9.

Rubenstein, Sharon. "Vagrant Sirens." Many Voices, Many Lands: Anthology of Poetry.
Ed. Will Stratford. Vol. 2. Orinda, CA: Poetry Center, 1988. 87.

Stoddard, Richard Henry. "The Song of the Syrens." Songs of Summer. Boston: Ticknor
and Fields, 1857. 8.

Thaniel, George. "Sirenusae." Vergilius 24 (1978): 61.

Criticism

Doherty, Lillian Eileen. Siren Songs: Gender, Audience, and Narrators in the Odyssey.

Fleming, Carrol. B. "Maidens of the Sea Can Be Alluring, but Sailor, Beware."
Smithsonian(June 1983): 86-95.

Holtze, Elizabeth. "Sirens and Their Song." In Woman's Power, Man's Game:
Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy King. Ed. Mary DeForest.
Waukonda, Il: Bolchazi-Carducci, 1993. 392-424. [Includes additional
bibliography, illustration, and cartoons.]

Saxe, Boria. "The Mermaid and Her Sisters from Archaic Goddess to Consumer
Society." Association for Study of Literature and the Environment(2000)
43-54.