Derek Mahon: Circe and Sirens

Allusion to Classical figure Odysseus and companions, Circe, Jocasta, Aridane, Phaedra, Anticleia, Tiresias, Elpenor

Allusion to Classical place Aeaea, Cimmerian Coast, the Underworld, cliffs of Scylla and Charybdis

Relationship to Classical text This is a condensed retelling of events in Odyssey X and XI.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Ten-line stanzas written in pentameter, as for the earlier poem 'Calypso' (Harbour Lights, 2005).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The Homeric revisions of Mahon's close friend and contemporary Michael Longley, e.g. in Gorsefires (London: Secker & Warburg, 1991) and The Ghost Orchid (London: Cape Poetry, 1995), are an unavoidable point of reference.

Comment The opening line "Homer was right..." recalls Mahon's revisionist poem 'Calypso' (see above), which, conversely, begins "Homer was wrong...". Mahon also makes reference to the complex narrative sequence of the Odyssey with its "flash back, fast forward to another beach,/ another island. Life on Earth similarly presents a series of coastal scenes, of which several are classical in their setting ('Ariadne on Naxos', 'Quaderno: Diogenes on the Shore' etc.).

Note Also collected in New Collected Poems, Gallery Press, 2011, p. 276-277