Siren Song

“Siren Song” is written in free verse. There is no formal pattern of meter or rhyme scheme. Free verse creates an informal, conversational tone. The effect is prose-like, but “Siren Song” remains poetic in its cadence and rhythm.

While meter plays no role in the structure of the poem, form does. The poem is composed of nine tercets—27 total lines. Atwood uses relatively short lines and simple, accessible language. Enjambment—the continuation of a thought past the end of the poetry line, with no end stop punctuation—builds tension throughout the lines and stanzas of the poem. Atwood specifically employs line breaks when and where she does to create surprise and multiple levels of meaning.

The first three stanzas introduce the siren song and seem fairly straightforward. However, the first three tercets comprise one long phrase that doesn’t see end stop punctuation until the ninth line. The first tercet announces the singularly irresistible song and ends in a colon to introduce the second tercet, which delivers the first bit of irony in a one-two-three punch. The song is a force. It causes men to “leap overboard in squadrons” (Line 5); they do so even though they can clearly see evidence of the victims before them.

The third tercet, which can be syntactically read as a continuation of the second, as it begins in lower case, further defines the song. The first line of the third stanza tells the reader/listener that it’s “the song nobody knows” (Line 7) while the second line holds that mysterious note a moment longer to make the reader wait to find out what happens to “anyone who has heard it” (Line 8) before delivering the news that everyone who heard it “is dead, and the others can’t remember” (Line 9).

While the reader has yet to meet the speaker by the end of the third stanza, there is still a clear sense that the narrator in unreliable. If “anyone who has heard it / is dead” (Lines 8-9), then how can there be others who can’t remember? This possible contradiction is easy to ignore in the first reading of the poem, but becomes more troubling in subsequent readings. Can the reader/listener trust what is being said? Yet, the tercet form gives the reader the stability of the number three: a historically magical number in art and literature. The tercet form provides a subtle reminder, too, that the speaker is one of three sirens.

In the fourth tercet, the reader learns that the speaker is a siren. She begins luring her object—the reader—by offering to divulge the secret. The second line introduces the proposition—"and if I do, will you […]” (Line 11). The third line discloses her desire to get out of her “bird suit” (Line 12). The three lines are punctuated as a single question so that the eye must travel from one line to the next to understand the full issue. The tonal move from the serious “secret” (Line 10) to the silly “bird suit” (Line 12) suggests it might be no big deal for the person to help the speaker, and that the person to whom the speaker is appealing might have more agency than the beached skulls would indicate.

In the fifth tercet, the siren complains about her situation. She uses the term “squatting” (Line 14) to describe how she inhabits the island, and further contradicts the notion of the legendary beauty and allure of the sirens by trivializing her looks as “picturesque and mythical” (Line 15) in a sardonic tone. The reader rolls right into the fifth stanza and the assertion that the siren’s sisters are “feathery maniacs” (Line 16) suggests she doesn’t feel connected to and is even repulsed by them. But the trio they sing is “fatal and valuable” (Line 18), so she is trapped.

Fully convinced, the reader moves to the sixth stanza with a promise and a deepening of the song through the repetition of “to you, / to you, only to you” (Lines 19-20). The alliteration of “[c]ome closer” (Line 21) in the last line of the seventh stanza is repeated in “cry for help” (Line 22) in the first line of the eighth stanza, and with “only you can” (Line 23) in the second line of the eighth stanza, followed by the consonance of “you are unique” (Line 24) in the third line. The hard c-sound lends a certain sputtering edge to the plea. Moaning through these lines is more you: “Only you, only you can, / you are unique” (Lines 23-24).

As the first line of the final tercet, “at last. Alas” (Line 25) uses assonance in four syllables to indicate a shift. The repetition of short a-sounds, almost an extended sigh, leads the reader into the abrupt and brutally apathetic “it is a boring song / but it works every time” (Lines 26-27).

Through form and literary devices such as enjambment and internal rhyme, “Siren Song” offers nine stanzas—nine little rooms— that illuminate the lure of the siren’s song as a tired but effective device. The poem, however, remains fresh and musical.