Allusions In Siren Song

Sirens: How they are used as an allusion in modern poems

The idea of Sirens are alluded to in the poems “Carolina” and “Sirens Song” as intoxicating and distasteful. Eric Church stated, “Sayin’ honey I miss ya like crazy,/ Like the sound of a siren song” in “Carolina” (Church). The idea of the siren song serves as a comparison between the yearning to get home to his significant other and the yearning to swim ashore to the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. Three stanzas later, the speaker in “Carolina” says “ But I gotta play the star in some little town again/ tonight/ Don’t get me wrong/ I love what I do”(Church). If one breaks down these lines, assumptions would be made that “little town” could mean Hollywood (Church). The speaker would not literally

This is because the actor loves acting, but he “miss[es] [the significant other] like crazy”(Church). For the sake of efficiency, I will assume that the narrator of the poem is a straight, married, male. The idea of going home to his wife is intoxicating, but his true passion is acting. Therefore, his spouse is an undesirable distraction from his occupation, albeit welcome. The idea that sirens are intoxicating but indesirable is continued in “Sirens Song” by the band, Miss May I. A section of the first stanza reads “A harlot caught his eye/ Over the queen he had/ the queen by her side”(Miss May I). These three lines would indicate that the ‘queen’ is the speaker and the ‘harlot’ is a woman competing with her for a man. The ‘queen’s’ pain is expressed when she says “Oh what a siren can do to a man with open ears”(Miss May I). Connecting the dots, the poem is about a man that was with a woman, but was ensnared by another woman. The ‘harlot’ and the ‘siren’ are in reference to the wily competitor. Due to the narrator describing herself as a queen, she believes that she is a better match for the man than her competitor. If one is to take the narrator’s stance as fact, then the