Siren Song

This is a poem on it tells the song that people sing before they die and they know they are going to die... this is my summary on the poem

The poem Siren Song is a poem about how a Siren wants to get souls. The song is irresistible. The poem is how everyone wants to learn the song. If you hear the song you die and if anyone that has heard it can’t remember it. When she plays the song on a trio she makes clusters of men jump of the boat, even when they see skulls of dead people on the beach. When they jump off the boat they die on the island and she get squadrons of the men’s souls at a time. The song she plays makes everyone die, every time. The song she makes everyone loves it but only hears it once because they die.
The song is also about how when men go to war. In World War 2 we lost of people. The Siren Song is a song a person would sing before dying. It is a song you sing when you know you are go to die and have the chance to stop it. They were jumping over the boat so they could try and get away alive.

This poem is great, it is a sly way for the siren to kill the reader. First, the siren tells why everyone wants to learn it: because it is irresistible. Men lose control because the song is powerful and they die even if evidence of deaths are right in front of them.(Lost in a trance) Then she says that she wants to be free and only the reader can help her because the reader is unique. The colon(three times) are leading to the song. In the end the siren says finally this boring song is over. It works everytime though. This poem symbolizes women's dominating power over men. Men look forward to having a luxurious woman that can do wonderful things for him. The siren sings her song even if it is tiresome because it is a myth and it should be followed because that is what everyone wants. The power that an irresisting woman has can kill. This is a sly poem in the end she kills the reader while trying to lure the person into her trap saying that she needs help and the reader is the only person that can help her.

This poem is a unique and clever depiction of the siren's ploy. Of course the siren song is "the one song everyone would like to learn". Who would not give everything to learn that song, to have such irresistible power? It is that very power-hungry greed that overpowers those who are drawn to it. This is not about the song of the sirens, as the siren claims, but the song itself. It is the very power of that song, and the desire to wield it, that gives it its power... a sort of chicken-and-the-egg paradox. The song is irresistible because it is so irresistible. The fact that the song is a “secret” makes it even more attractive, for power is relative. If everyone has power, no one does. The siren claims to be calling for help because she is giving up such a valuable secret, and the listener will be suspicious if she just out and tells him. How valuable can this secret be if she tells it to just anyone? No, she cleverly begs him to save her because this seems to be a reasonable motive for giving him this power: the hope of escape. Since only he can save her, only he is worthy of hearing this song. The sailor is no longer suspicious of the gift because now it comes with a cost, and seems genuine. Now she can catch both the corrupt men (who are power-hungry and want to learn the song) and the noble men (who would hope to save a damsel in distress). And they are drawn to the rocks; the only secret to the siren song is that there is no secret to it, that it is irresistible because it is.

Poem has obvious feminist undertones which are about the concept of the Male Gaze by Laura Mulvey.
The Siren is the ultimate seductress. She can lure any man who hears her, and lead them to their deaths. On one level, she is an object, that which is gazed upon, and she dislikes it, wants out of this "bird suit"--which can imply colorful, attractive, etc, but since it is a suit, it is all surface and not her true self.
But as much as she wants out of this, she recognizes how powerful and effective a means seduction is in the last stanza. Although "boring" a means, she again becomes a damsel in distress (help me help me) if it can get her what she wants...
In this way, the poem negotiates between the complete rejection of feminine attributes which feminists often see as demeaning and evil, and an acceptance of the fact that seduction is a tool like any other...

I think that the most intriguing comment I have read said that the whole poem is the song of the sirens. This almost makes sense, and yet I have to argue against it. The siren's voice throughout the poem is secretive, alluring, even hopefull ,but at the end she gives up and says "Alas it is a boring song but it works every time." Without this line I would possibly agree that the poem in its entirety addresses a sailor, but this line is her weakness, and it exposes her true vulnrability. If her chivalrous hero were to hear that he had been so cunningly tricked, would he really come and save her? The reader now knows it, and thus realizes just how simple and obvious it is to pull the blinds over the eyes of a male ,and possibly send them to their deaths. (Males, please don't get offended, I'm just going to the extreme with Atwood's social commentary).

I fell in love with this "sly" poem the first day I saw it in my literature text book. I love how the reader of the poem is convinced into sympathising with the speaker, and is seduced by the promise of hearing her famous song; in the end the reader is betrayed by the siren, who shrugs her shoulders and says "it is a boring song, but it works every time". We can't exactly say we wern't warned- we read on despite the "bleached skulls" in the second stanza.
I was reading a book by Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride, which had a passage which I thought expanded upon the idea of the poem. The villaness of the book is Zenia, who seduces and then abandons the men of her three friends, effectively destroying them. One charectar wants to know what gives this seductrice such power over men. It must lie, she surmises, in telling the man that he is unique, that only he understands her and can save her. Then Zenia turns the tables and shows them that the opposite is true, that they are nothing special.
This charectar goes through a variety of professions and roles over the course of the book- unlike the speaker of the poem, who is stuck in her bird suit- but you get the sense by the end of the book that she has only one role she is really able to play, and like the sirens she is bored of it.