Calypso

by: Suzanne Vega

My name is Calypso

And I have lived alone

I live on an island

And I waken to the dawn

A long time ago

I watched him struggle with the sea

I knew he was drowning

And I brought him into me

Now today

Come morning light

He sails away

After one last night

I let him go

My name is Calypso

My garden overflows

Thick and wild and hidden

is the sweetness there that grows

My hair it blows long

As I sing into the wind

I tell of nights

Where I could taste the salt on his skin

Salt of the waves

And of tears

And though he pulled away

I kept him here for years

I let him go

My name is Calypso

I have let him go

In the dawn he sails away

To be gone forever more

And the waves will take him in again

But he’ll know their ways now

I will stand upon the shore

With a clean heart

And my song in the wind

The sand will sting my feet

And the sky will burn

It’s a lonely time ahead

I do not ask him to return

I let him go

Questions:

1. What is the tone of this song?

2. Why do you think the words “I let him go” are repeated so many times in the song?

3. Why does Calypso say that she has a “clean heart”?

Penelope

by: Dorothy Parker

In the pathway of the sun,

In the footsteps of the breeze,

Where the world and the sky are one,

He shall ride the silver seas.

He shall cut the glittering wave.

I shall sit at home, and rock;

Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;

Brew my tea, and snip my thread;

Bleach the linen for my bed.

They will call him brave.

Questions:

1. Who is “he” referred to in lines 1-5? How is he described?

2. How does the speaker describer her life?

3. On what aspects of Penelope’s life does this poem focus?

4. What does Penelope symbolize?

Odysseus

by: Merwin

Always the setting forth was the same,

Same sea, same dangers waiting for him

As though he had got nowhere but older

Behind him on the receding shore

The identical reproaches, and somewhere

Out before him, the unraveling patience

He was wedded to. There were the islands

Each with its woman and twining welcome

To be navigated, and one to call “home.”

The knowledge of all that he betrayed

Grew till it was the same whether he stayed

Or went. Therefore, he went. And what wonder if sometimes he could not remember

Which was the one who wished on his departure perils that he could never sail through, and which, improbable, remote, and true, was the one he kept sailing home to?

Questions:

1. What aspects of the Odyssey are alluded to in this poem?

2. What point does this poem make about Odysseus’ adventures?

3. What ideas about life and experience does this poem explore?

Circe

by: Olga Broumas

The Charm

The fire bites, the fire bites. Bites

to the little death. Bites

till she comes to nothing. Bites

on her own sweet tongue.

She goes on. Biting.

The Anticipation

They tell me a woman waits, motionless till she’s wooed. I wait

spiderlike, effortless as they weave

even my web for me, tying the cords in knots with their courting hands. Such power over them. And the spell their own. Who could release them? Who would untie the cord

with a cloven hoof?

The Bite

What I wear in the morning pleases

me: green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped in myself as the smell of night wraps round my sleep when I sleep outside.

By the time

I get to the corner

bar, corner store, corner construction

site, I become divine. I turn

men into swine. Leave

them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.

Questions:

1. What do Circe and the speaker symbolize in the poem?

2. What is the source of Circe’s power in the myth and in the poem?

3. What is the significance of:

a. “spiderlike”

b. “courting hands”

c. “cloven hoof”

Siren Song

by: Margaret A. Wood

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

The song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the bleached skulls

The song nobody knows

because anybody who has heard it

is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here

squatting on this island

looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don’t enjoy singing

this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.

Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alas

it is a boring song

but it works every time.

Questions:

1. Who were the sirens in Greek mythology? What effect did their song have on men?

2. What is the speaker’s “secret”?

3. What does the speaker say about her life?

4. What happens to the “you” at the end?

Ithaka

by Constantine Cavafy

"As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon -

don't be afraid of them:

you'll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare sensation

touches your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon -

you won't encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfumes of every kind -

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from those who know.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But don't hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you're old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you've gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.

Wise as you have become, so full of experience,

you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

Questions:

1. What does “Ithaka” stand for (what does it symbolize)?

2. What do “Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon” seem to symbolize?

Where does the poem suggest that the “Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon” come from?

Penelope to Ulysses

By Meredith Schwartz

Like a spider committing suicide

each night I unweave the web of my day.

I have no peace.

About me the insistent buzz of flies

drones louder every day.

I am starving.

I watch them, always, unblinking stare.

All my dwindling will

I use in not moving, not trying, unweaving.

I pull in my empty nets

eating myself, waiting.

Questions:

What does Penelope literally unweave in the Odyssey?
Who are the “flies”?
Why is the fly metaphor appropriate?
What does it mean that Penelope is “starving” and “eating myself”?

An Ancient Gesture

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

Penelope did this too.

And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day

And undoing it all through the night;

Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;

And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,

And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,

Suddenly you burst into tears;

There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,

In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;

Ulysses did this too.

But only as a gesture,--a gesture which implied

To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.

He learned it from Penelope…

Penelope who really cried.

Questions:

Why does it say that Ulysses’ tears were “only as a gesture”?
What is the “assembled throng” referring to?
What does the last line mean?

The Cyclops in the Ocean

By Nikki Giovanni

Moving slowly…against time…patiently majestic…

The Cyclops…in the ocean…meets no Ulysses…

Through the night…he sighs…throbbing against the shore…declaring…for the adventure…

A wall of gray…gathered by a slow touch…slash and slither…through the waiting screens…separating into nodules…making my panes…accept the touch…

Not content…to watch my frightened gaze…he clamors beneath the sash…dancing to my sill…

Certain to die…when the sun…returns…

Tropical Storm Dennis

August 15-18, 1981, Florida

Questions:

What is Tropical Storm Dennis being compared to in the poem?
How are those two things similar?
What do you think would have happened to the Cyclops in the Odyssey if Ulysses had not met him?
What are screens, panes, sash, and sill all related to?
What do those words suggest about the point of view of the speaker?
Which words in the poem are onomatopoeia (imitate sounds)?
What do the sounds in the poem suggest?