Derek Mahon: Calypso

Length / Form Ten, ten-line stanzas written in pentameter.

Allusion to Classical figure Calypso, Homer, Circe, Aeolus, Sirens, 'cliff-monsters' (i.e. Scylla and Charybdis), Odysseus, nymphs, Penelope and her suitors, Helen ("the face that sank the final skiff"), the Pleiades.

Allusion to Classical place Circe's ‘magic castle’, the Underworld, Ogygia, Ithaca

Relationship to Classical text The poem presents a revisionary approach to the Homeric version of events (particularly the opening of book V); here Odysseus remains with Calypso instead of returning to Ithaca.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts The quotation "ceased to please" is taken from E.V. Rieu's translation of Odyssey V, 153 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946), p.92.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The influence of Mahon's friend and contemporary Michael Longley and his anti-heroic revisions of Homeric epic can be felt strongly throughout (compare, for instance, Longley's early poem ‘Circe’ (p.30 in M. Longley, No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1969)). The reference to a grave marked with an oar, harks back to the burial of Elpenor in Odyssey XII, 8-15, but also to Mahon's poems 'Lives' and 'Light Music' (CP p.44-46 and p.70-74).

Comment Mahon alludes to his own status as an exile (from the politicised poetics of Northern Ireland) and divorcee. He also evokes the harbour of Kinsale (where he is now living) in his description of Odysseus' island refuge ("decks and crates/ creak in the harbour like tectonic plates")

Note Also collected in New Collected Poems, Gallery Press, 2011, p. 278-280.