Circe & the Dead Man

Circe makes me think of sirens. "Circe" by Diann Blakely seems to bring in the siren myth, or so I think. Although, it is not song that draws the sailors to her, but familiarity, domesticity, and limitations. This connects very well, though, with the myth of Circe, a woman who turned men to swine. The men pursued something they desired (food) which she had tained, and therefore the men met their demise, becoming swine. the men in this poem adhere to all of Circe's rules for their own domestic comfort.

Poems about Circe al seem to be about men's desires. This line captures her persona ver well:

...If I wanted only to hold you

I would hold you prisoner.

*

Very nice.

I found Marvin Bell's "The Book of the Dead Man" very interesting. It was fascinating that Bell, instead of doing a persona poem of one figure, e uses one figure (the dead man) as a persona or comparison to another figure (Medusa). I looked onlineat other sections of this poem and realized that the dead man is very experimetal and curious with his own body. He is always testing his limbs and attempting to learn about himself. He seems isolated and suspended in time, like Medusa, or Medusa's stone. Here is an excerpt from section 3 entitled "About the Beginnings of the Dead Man".

He bends a knee that doesn't wish to bend, he raises an arm that
aruges with a soulder, e turns his head by throwing it
wildly to the side.
He envies the lobster the protective sleeves of its limbs.
He believes the jellyfish has it easy, floating, letting everything pass
through it.
He would like to be a starfish, admired for its shape long after.

*

Like Medusa, the Dead Man seems mythical and suspended in isolation. Not belonging or desirable.

Reading all these persona poems made me want to write a persona poem about the Garden of Eden. My boyfriend recently introduced me to this Josh Ritter song entitled "The Temptation of Adam". The revisioning that takes place in this ballad is very interesting. Here are the lyrics.

If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm
I said on the first occasion that I met Marie
We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door
And I don't think that she really thought that much of me

I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb
She just came along and started to ignore me
But as we waited for the Big OneI started singing her my songs
And I think she started feeling something for me

We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside
What five letters spell "apocalypse" she asked me
I won her over saying "W.W.I.I.I."
She smiled and we both knew that she'd misjudged me

Oh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you
It felt almost like a home of sorts or something
And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new
And I'd watch you with my thumb above the button

Then one night you found me in my army issue cot
And you told me of your flash of inspiration
You said fusion was the broken heart that's lonely's only thought
And all night long you drove me wild with your equations

Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take
We'd make our love and then ransack the rations
I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades
And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions

Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map
Of all the places where you thought that love would be found
But I would only need one pin to show where my heart's at
In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground

We could hold each other close and stay up every night
Looking up into the dark like it's the night sky
And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead
And carve our name in hearts into the warhead

Oh Marie there's something tells me things just won't work out above
That our love would live a half-life on the surface
So at night while you are sleepingI hold you closer just because
As our time grows short I get a little nervous

I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I.
Would we ever really care the world had ended
You could hold me here forever like you're holding me
look at that great big red button and I'm tempted