The siren’s call

Alison Chisholm is drawn into the depths of a reader’s persona poem

gone before, leaving their legacy of the world’s supply of poetry. The skill in blending is infinite, and each of us possesses an individual share of it.

For Leicester poet Colin HE Wiltshire, the Lorelei legend of the Rhine, a TS Eliot character, a love of opera, and a penchant for writing dramatic monologues came together to spark his poem If I were Lorelei.

The title positions the reader under the skin of the German siren as described in Heinrich Heine’s 1824 poem Die Lorelei, set to music by Friedrich Silcher, Franz Liszt and many other composers. In the Heine poem she sits on the rock that bears her name, her beauty and compelling voice luring sailors to crash on the rocks. Here, the poet puts her in a more proactive position. His Lorelei is a singer in both opera and cabaret, with a powerful understanding of her presence and her power.

The opening of the poem introduces another literary figure, where the narrator makes a direct address to Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock. In his Love Song,

Prufrock comments that he has heard mermaids singing, each to each, but doesn’t expect to hear them sing to him. So Colin Wiltshire’s opening line is neatly ironic when Lorelei provides him with an answer to the unasked request, even qualifying it with the unarguable get-out clause, you couldn’t afford me.

The one chink in the narrator’s self-assurance is revealed in her haste to describe how she played Carmen, but the critics weren’t convinced. That brief third stanza is the most prose-like and conversational passage in the poem. This is the place for justification and confession, not for poetic meanderings. She makes a quick recovery. She’s back in command at the heart of the poem, becoming the ice queen, the bitch goddess, and so regaining her confidence.

The physical description that comes next takes us out of Heine’s image to show her with straight black hair. The poet points out that in this context it seemed natural to give her black hair rather than the golden hair she’s combing in the Heine – and of course that’s the beauty of choice when you put your own stamp on the content.

Lorelei flaunts her goth persona, relishes the image of herself sheathed in scarlet, boasts her destructive urge to suck your soul and watch you crash and drown.

The poem, then, is rich in story and myth, with a neat literary allusion and the poet’s voice speaking out through the narrator’s lips. Colin Wiltshire explains