Discovering Poetry: "Siren's Song"

I first discovered Margret Atwood my second year of college. It was in a class taught by my favorite college professor.  For our final we had to chose a poem to memorize and explicate.  My previous post on Shakespeare was the result of the last class I took from the same professor.  She was the teacher to truly fostered my love of literature and who taught me how to write.

I was immensely nervous about this assignment. During my sophomore year of high school I had a similar assignment which I failed miserably at.  It was a horrendous failure- a truly mortifying experience.  I was not sure that I could do this assignment.  I respected my teacher a great deal and she said it was just about putting in the time so I started trying to chose a poem.

If I was going to memorize a poem I decided I had better enjoy the one I chose.  I had never truly enjoyed poetry which might have been part of my issue during that botched assignment back in high school.  Throughout the semester my professor opened my eyes to poetry and I slowly began to enjoy and then love poetry.   My favorite was Atwood's "Siren Song" which focused on Greek Mythology.

Siren Song

1 This is the one song everyone
2 would like to learn: the song
3 that is irresistible:

4 the song that forces men
5 to leap overboard in squadrons
6 even though they see beached skulls

7 the song nobody knows
8 because anyone who had heard it
9 is dead, and the others can’t remember.

10 Shall I tell you the secret
11 and if I do, will you get me
12 out of this bird suit?

13 I don’t enjoy it here
14 squatting on this island
15 looking picturesque and mythical

16 with these two feathery maniacs,
17 I don’t enjoy singing
18 this trio, fatal and valuable.

19 I will tell the secret to you,
20 to you, only to you.
21 Come closer. This song

22 is a cry for help: Help me!
23 Only you, only you can,
24 you are unique

25 at last. Alas
26 it is a boring song
27 but it works every time.

In Greek mythology there are three Sirens who sing men to their deaths.  These women were partially covered in feathers and lived on an island laying in wait for unsuspecting sailors.   The speaker in "Siren Song" is one of the three Sirens and the audience is the victim of the Siren.  The poem is made up of nine stanzas that are three lines long. The format makes the poem flow smoothly as though it truly could lull it's audience to an untimely death.  There is a great deal of enjambment which makes this poem smooth.  There are two differned readings that I can take away from this peom.  The first is that people's desires can be there down fall.  I can easily read this in "Siren Song" but that seems to simplistic.

The second reading is that this entire poem is an allusion to the Greek myth which Atwood uses to comment on the dynamics of men and women.  The men in this poem view women as week and in need of saving.  There is a duplicity to the song in the poem.  The colon at the end of line three shows that the song has already stated while the Siren is telling the man that she will tell him about her song.  Her plea for help is how she traps him.  His need to save her is his doom.  In the end she finds herself bored with the outcome as it is always the same.  The Siren may indeed want to shed her "bird suit" and be rescued but she is trapped in her role.

The tone of "Siren's Song" helps with this second reading as well.  There is an ironic tone that can be seductive, melancholy, and eve bored at times.  There is a push and pull to male and female dynamics and I think this shows how woman are not as week as men think they are but women can still feel trapped in their roles.  While the Siren might like to be free of her role she does not know how to change who she is anymore than the man knows how to resist her call for aid.  I do not think this poem is saying that women destroy men; I think this poem is showing the inescapable differences of men and women.  There are many layers to this poem and many different readings that can be taken away from it.  This is the beauty of a well written poem- there is always more to lean.