Olga Broumas: Circe

Length / Form A short poem in three sections. Word repletion, irregular rhyming and alliteration give a chant-like feel, intensifying the allusions to Circe's witchcraft.

Allusion to Classical figure In addition to Circe the poem also alludes to Penelope, her Suitors and Odysseus' companions

Allusion to Classical place None. Broumas transplants the characters into her own world.

Relationship to Classical text Parallels drawn between Circe and Penelope, via references to weaving and 'courting hands', demonstrate a broad knowledge of the Odyssey. However, Broumas is selective in framing her image of Circe, depicting only those aspects of the Odyssean myth which represent her as an empowered female.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Broumas plays on the word ‘web', a common translation of the Greek histos (Odyssey X, 226 etc.), to denote the looms at which Circe and Penelope weave and also the spider's-snare in which her Circe traps unwitting males. The pun echoes the implied Homeric threat of weaving as a symbol of guile and, on a metapoetic level, authorial control of the myth. Her reference to 'tying the cord in knots' perhaps refers to Odyssey VIII, 447-8, where Odysseus uses a 'cunning knot' taught to him by Circe.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts H.D. (Hilda Doolittle 1886-1961): Broumas' female deities often echo the subjects of H.D.'s poems in Hymen, including Demeter, Thetis, Circe and Leda, whilst ‘Calypso' mirrors the short verse-play of the same name. H.D.'s Circe yearns for an unattainable lover and bitterly contrasts the ease with which she can 'call men from the edges of the earth' (Collected Poems, 1984). Broumas, rejecting the implied powerlessness of this veiled homoeroticism, replaces the masculine, animal presences of H.D.'s poem with grunting swine. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939): Atwood's ‘Circe/Mud Poems' (You Are Happy, 1974) reflect on the roles ofCirce and Odysseus in language which contemporizes the myth's inherent gender politics and establishes Circe as a key figure in late 20th century revisionary mythmaking. Whilst Atwood's Circe expresses boredom at the tired heterosexual clichés which the myth binds her to, Broumas' feminist lesbian perspective re-establishes Circe's sense of power. The Odyssean Circe also features in poems by Glück (Meadowlands, 1996) and Duffy (The World's Wife 1999), who continue the mythopoetic discourse. Adrienne Rich (b. 1929). Rich was a key figure in promoting revisionist mythmaking among female poets in the 1970s (see Rich, 1972), and also uses an Odyssey theme in her poem ‘Eurycleia's Tale' (Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, 1963). James Joyce (1882-1941): In language strewn with porcine references (note the 'cloven hoof', p.571, an image also used by Broumas), Joyce's Ulysses represents the sexual threat posed by Circe and the bestialisation of his 'hero' Bloom, by transporting the story to a district of brothels. Broumas also focuses on the sexual degradation of lusting males, whilst transposing the myth to a contemporary urban setting, but without confining Circe to the role of prostitute

Comment Although the ‘revisionist mythology' of this ardently feminist poem is perhaps less subtle than that deployed in other poems in the collection, such as ‘Triple Muse' and ‘Leda with her Swan', Broumas' representation of Circe brings a new perspective to the mythopoetic discourse on gender and sexuality, brought to the fore by poets such as Rich and Atwood in the 1970s (Ostriker 1982 gives an overview).