Circe
Nicelle Davis    
Lowbrow Press
ISBN: 9780982955345

Reviewer: Emilia Fuentes Grant

    
          Nicelle Davis’s Circe is a look at what life might have been like post-The Odyssey. The hero has returned home, the adventure has concluded, and life has gone on. Circe is changed from immortal witch and lover to single mother coming to terms with her new life. Sirens sing of their conquests with remorse and bitterness, joined by the voices of their baffled sisters, even as Odysseus, the cunning hero, finds himself lost in domestic life.
    
          Circe’s island was one of Odysseus’s many detours in The Odyssey, and he struck an agreement with the powerful witch: she would forgive his men and remove their curse in exchange for one year of his company on her lonely island.

          For her, it was love; for him, a clever solution to his problem. At the end of a year, he sailed for Ithaca, leaving Circe once again alone on her island.

What used to a be a box of love letters
is now a book of spells. I read them.

They make me. Remake me…

(“Circe after Odysseus Leaves”)

          Davis’s opening poem sheds light on the complexities of Circe’s character. Her magic and immortality are in constant contention with her emotional vulnerability.  Through the lens of Davis’s poetry, Circe is more woman than immortal witch, and her conflict serves as a paradigm for the plight of the modern woman. She must balance strength with tenderness, self sufficiency with loneliness, sex with love.

          Davis highlights the differences in Circe’s character and that of Odysseus’s other women. Penelope is his wife, his prize and his home. Calypso is the object of his lust, so powerful she held him captive for seven years. But Circe was a bargain, almost a business arrangement; she always loved him more. Consider Davis’s verses from Circe to their son:

…when I first saw your father.
Odd. Yes. But how
else to explain—I broke his

ribs with the ease of cracking
open an egg. Best
night of sex I ever had. And

then you were in me. Now
it all seems
so practical, but at the time

I had mistaken vulnerability
for love.

(“Sing Into Empty Until it Sings”)

          Davis writes with a wry humor in Circe’s voice, playing with Odysseus’s name “Odd. Yes.” and flippantly alluding to the breaking of his ribs. Still, the poem is poignant. For all her strength, Circe is wounded by loneliness and rejection, a demigod once receptive to love and now contending with its repercussions.

          Yet, in Davis’s re-imagining, Circe isn’t the only one who wrestles with their separation.

Odysseus exaggerates. Understandably. It is
broken cupboards and the scurry of unwanted
feet in walls—not mermaids—that make
walking away from the sea difficult...

               ...They talk about the possibility
of digging up  the yard—purchasing top soil.
Making it all look  just a little better than before.
Still there is a cupboard to fix, an exterminator
to call. Can’t risk depreciation. Not in this market.
    
(“Visions of Return from the Crystal Ball of Circe’s Glass Eye”)

          Davis does not allow Odysseus to end his story on a triumphant return. There is a family waiting in Ithaca, a wife and child, a home to be cared for. Again, with tenderness and irony, Davis brings these characters into reality. Odysseus becomes a suburban husband, a dad, and homeowner.  In Davis’s hands his humanity is evident and, in a way, it’s reassuring. The myth, the trickster and lover, the Greek hero, is just a man at the end of his journey.

          Though Circe is the central focus of the poetry, Sirens are mentioned often, including in Davis’s introduction, in which she shares that “there was never enough about the Sirens.”

      …Rush of blood, warm scent turning soft
kisses into hard nibbles...
                                             …Next chance, they’ll
remember to be gentle—to take him without
consuming the veins that tie the heart to flesh.
    
(“Sea Nymphs with the Appetite of Birds”)

          The remorse the Siren feels is evocative, especially when read alongside the indifference of Odysseus and Circe. The Sirens only do what they are made to do; Odysseus and Circe, however, have a choice. They can do better. In almost every poem of this collection, in some way, directly or indirectly, Davis explores the question of choice: nature versus external influence, each individual’s impact on the world around him or her.  

          Of the many themes present in the book, Davis’s treatment of motherhood is most compelling, as it applies to Circe. In Homer’s poem Circe was cruel, cunning, she was a witch. But in Davis’s poetry, the presence of Circe’s son requires her to forgive and to love again. The vengeful sorceress is gone.

Cut my hand gutting a trout—slight incision,
        but substantial color. Suck my own
would and continue up the trout’s belly. Its
        silver body instructing the knife
to stop where gills connect—tough joint—
        place where escape once lived. On
the ground, this animal’s interior spreads like
        violet paint across rocks…
       
(“Circe Teaches Her Son How to Fish”)
    
          Imbued with the same sensuality and fantasy as the classic poem, Circe originates from a modern and decidedly sympathetic perspective. As Davis states in her prologue, “monsters’ faults are not their own, rather products of another’s story.” Circe tells the story of those others, revealing the grace within monsters and the corruption within heroes.  In Davis’s latest offering, Circe, she and artist Cheryl Gross effectively turn Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey on its ear.

          (A brief note on the artwork featured in Circe: Cheryl Gross’s drawings accompany Davis’s poetry with sparse, dark lines. The pieces depict sirens, men, birds, hearts, eyes, and other images offered in the poems, complementing the subject matter, rather than illustrating it directly. The overall mood of the book is captured in the images. They are objects in motion or frozen in place, but always the pictures are surreal, fantastical, and haunting, like Davis’s work. For me what’s most compelling in each drawing is the careful use of lines and colors. Much like poems, Gross’s drawings rely on negative white space as much as the dark lines and colors on the page to create the overall impression.)