Nina MacLaughlin - Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung.

 

Nina MacLaughlin. Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung. (USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2019). 

This rewrite is better than I had expected. Each story is told using a different form, mostly first person, some dialogue, or third person, mostly set in the ancient past but including modern references, so creating the impression of everywhen. More than thirty stories create the cumulative effect of a chorus. Each form is different. My observation is that the women are all lonely. 

I collected many impressive lines. The rewritings that impressed me include Arachne (as an example of weaving); the confusion of Callisto as she transforms into a bear and a constellation; the story of Scylla begins as emails exchanged with her friend Galatea, and the creepy stalker guy Polyphemus, then Circe turns her into a monster in the water with a skirt of dogs where Scylla tries to cope by controlling what she can, her own thoughts; Medusa saying she is lonely; the irony of Egera turning into a spring when she was tears anyway; Semele expressed in the form of bright light with the word ‘light’ repeated on the page until it overtakes itself and forms darkness; Proserpina’s friends tell their side of the story; Procne as a swallow giving a guided tour of her story to a rider on her back; Sirens as bird girls (‘our voices like the sounds you hear from the womb’); Eurydice’s story is retold as two rock stars in an abusive relationship, that ends in an underground bar called The Cobra Club, and features Sissy, HayDaze, and Penny. Ivory Girl is the story of Galatea, how Pygmalian hated real women and their bodies, depicting real women teasing Galatea for not having a body that does not produce smell and wetness and is not squishable and marked by life. It is read by McLoughlin in interviews and book signings. 

Here is an example from the chapter on Io: 

So the coward changed me to a cow. 

He’d made me an animal already. 

Begin again. 

Low. I am a cow. All white. But not my eyes. The size of a baby’s fist, they are the color of small ponds in fall. Io inside me. Her voice is lost. Low. My cry, my wordless bass-horn moan, the sound of it frightened Io inside me. The wordless expression of loss… He pulled me to a field and he sat on top of the hill and watched. I no longer lowed. Head bowed, lowered, couldn't lift it for the woe (pp. 98-102). 

....

The transformations show the brains of the women remain when they are changed into animals, springs, or stars. The effect of the whole book is disturbing and terribly sad.

Here are more: 

Arachne:

I liked the loom form when I was small. I learned early and it’s most of what I did. I got taught the basics, then I taught myself more and I just kept doing and doing and I impressed my own self. I’d finish up a tapestry and I’d lay it down on the floor. I’d stand above and think, Goddam. It wasn’t there, now it is. Every time it felt like a miracle. I’d look at the skeins in a heap by the look, all their separate threads, and I’d think, Goddam, first strand one by one, then this all together. This thing whole. Something out of something else. I made this transformation. The act of art is metamorphosis. It's where I found my pride. 

........

Callisto:

I stayed silent and my face was flushed, my cheeks burning. They all must know that I am ruined, I thought. They see it. They know. I kept my eyes on the ground and held a small stone in my hand and clutched it. But they didn’t know. None of them knew. None of them knew because none of them had been touched the way I was touched and none had been wrecked the way I was wretched and what was torn in me would never be torn in them and I was alone in my knowing and this was not a relief.   

.........

I tried to beg, but my voice started to change and dark stubbly hair grew from my arms and my arms got thicker and my hands swelled and fingers fused together and thick claws grew from the tips with leathery pads below and my jaw widened and inside my mouth, which has been so familiar, my tongue slimmed and lengthened and the teeth inside were sharp. My back rounded and my legs shortened and widened and claws grew too, from my toes. And a growl came out of me, deep like the sound of falling rocks, something dangerous and angry and scared. I bounded off, four-legged, unable ever to speak. And though I could see my strong claws and could wrap my tongue over my dark brown nose, my mind was my mind….

There are so many other stars, all of us burning. And I see all the stars around me, and I wonder, Are you the same as me? Is this what we all are? Fires fueled by fury, burning through the nights? Is that why you’re up here, and you, and you? No place on earth for a fury so hot and bright? For a roar so loud? I wonder this. I see some blazing brighter and I think: What are you remembering? 

............

Io:

So the coward changed me to a cow.

He’d made me an animal already.

Begin again.

Low. I am a cow. All white. But not my eyes. The size of a baby’s fist, they are the color of small ponds in fall. Io inside me. Her voice is lost. Low. My cry, my wordless bass-horn moan,  the sound of it frightened Io inside me. The wordless expression of loss. 

….

He pulled me to a field and he sat on top of the hill and watched. I no longer lowed. Head bowed, lowered, couldn't lift it for the woe. 

........

Scylla:

This story begins as emails between her friend Galatea, and the creepy stalker guy Polyphemus. Circe turns her into a monster in the water with a skirt of dogs. Scylla tries to cope by controlling what she can, her own thoughts:

It’s the most important choice of a life, where you aim your attention. Sometimes the choice is taken away from us, our ability to choose compromised. Over time, I hardened. I became a rock. I crush ships and drown the men so Circe does not get what she wants. Galatea visits. She sits on the sun-warmed surface of me. We talk. She scrapes the barnacles and washes the bird shit off of me just the way I brushed her hair. 

I try to focus on this. On absorbing the warmth of the sun. On the rise and fall of the tides. On the children who climb on me and the waves that splash. I try to focus on the way the rain tastes, the damp caress of the fog. I try to ignore the ships and the men. I try to ignore the memory of what put me in this palace. I try to ignore the sense of loss and anger. I try so hard. But ignoring does not mean gone. And the men and memoirs return like an army on the march and sometimes that I’m surrounded. Sometimes I win the battle - my attention on the seagull cries, the light along the horizon, the sound of a ship splintering against my edge - and sometimes I surrender.  

…..

Semele - form on page - bright light

.....

Medusa

Translators build the bridges. The chasm between languages is a deep ravine of silence. So what can we do but trust that the translators’ bridges are sturdy, will carry the weight of meaning from one side of the ravine to the other? But all these bridges are faulty. Hitches and chinks because one language cannot cross over to another language unaltered and unflawed.

And some of the bridges lead meaning into exile.

Which is where this story has been living. Far removed from its home. I am the home of this story. After thousands of years of other people’s telling, of all these different bridges, of the wrong words leading meaning and truth astray, I’ll tell it myself. The story of I got my snakes. It’s short.  

…

I am so lonely….

And the last thing I'll tell you? It’s not the snakes that are so petrifying to people. It’s not the serpents writhing from my head that turn people to stone. Don’t you know?

It is my rage.

I hope for a day when a fury as white-hot as mine can be held by another, accepted, understood, maybe even shared. I am not optimistic and in the meantime the statues in my hall grow in number and cast gruesome shadows on the floor. 

........

Arethusa

Other creatures, furred and force, skulked about, with long claws and long jaws lined with mean teeth...

Now, above again, I see the stars I had forgotten. I feel the tree links bend and skim my skin. The whole broad sky opens itself above me. Even in the dark, bits of light shine. I lift my head, I wring the water from my hair. There, the moon. The white light of it dances on my surface. I’m made of water. I dance with light. 

........

Procne and Philomela

Procne as swallow giving guided tour of her story

Nightingales sing at night. The males are the only ones that sing. The females are mute. 

.......

Baucis

The noises of an active kitchen made good concert. The sizzle of the onions, the bubbling of the boiling water, storming all around the pot, the thunk of the knife through cabbage leaves into the thick board below. 

.......

Ivory Girl - is the story of Pygmalion and read by McLoughlin in interviews and book signing. The women around the ivory girl tell her they know she is not a real women.

And when Pygmalion begged Venus to make her real, and Venus granted his request and put moving blood in her body and gave her breasts that squished if you gripped them, we teased her, but only because wanted to make her know.

Where's your stretch marks, sweetheart?

Where's your peeeeeer eeeee odddddd?

Where's your laugh? don't you laugh?

Where's the one hair at your nipple?

Where's the flesh crease on your back?

Where's your smells, sweetheart? Don't you smell, sweetheart?

Where's the strength in your legs?

Where's the muscles in your shoulders?

Where's the wetness? Where's the rivers, oceans, rain, tearfall?

Where's your sag?

Where's your power, sweetheart?

We'll tell you sweetheart?

It's in you, sweetheart. All over you. It fills every curve and swell. Find it, sweetheart. Know it, sweetheart.

He doesn't make you who you are.

.......

Egeria

I wept, wept, wept, and Diana took pity on me, too. She turned me into a spring. I was only tears anyway. She made me what I was. Come dip your feet in, drink. But if you tell me how bad it could've been, I will drown you.

.......

Atalanta

I liked to win.

One coach I had trained me this way: forget marriage. You are not a wife. If you marry, you will lose yourself.

I did not like to lose. 

…..

Sirens

Everything is movement. Everything is song. 

We’re golden-feathered bird girls and we sing by the sea. Bird bodied, gold winged, bird legged, bird clawed, girls shouldered, girl faced, girl voiced. Our harmonies are wind through trees, ice freezing across water, the moans of ecstacy and lamentation, all the birds, all the fish, all the creatures of the sky and seas waking up at once. We are the sound beyond the weather, the sound on the other side of the sky. Our song will bring you voidward. Our song will bring you home.

…..

Proserpina

A mother’s nightmare. Cere’s mind cracked open. Some would say: the earth grieved with the goddess. More true: a mother’s grief is powerful enough to change the world. Color slunk away as though it had been shamed. Our long summer ended. Ceres wanted to find her daughter. We wanted to find our friend. 

....

Search

…We turned to bird girls to find our friend. We soar and perch on the rocks and sing. We sing for our lost friend. We sing for ourselves. We sing because we love the song. But our simple song got twisted. The men in ships they heard us sing and they could not resist the sound. And so they called us dangerous. When it’s they who lack control. And so we’re known as monsters. When what we are is bird girls, our voices like the sounds you hear from the womb. 

.....

Eurydice

Story of two rock stars in an abusive relationship. It ends in an underground bar called The Cobra Club, and features Sissy, HayDaze, and Penny:

His wife, Penny, sat to the side on a throne by the bar looking wan in the gloom. She was much younger than him and the rumor was she wanted out. She’d tour for a couple months each summer, but was always back down here come fall. I’d see her out in July and August - she’d be tan, wearing tiny shorts, had a laugh that would make the flowers grow. Here, she was limp, and sullen every season. Moody, I guess you could say. Seasonally depressed maybe. Or maybe sick of being married to a club owner whose breath always smelled like burnt hair.