Wake, Siren: Affects and Metamorphoses of Poetic Rewriting

Among the profusion of recent mythological retellings, Nina MacLaughlin’s Wake, Siren. Ovid Resung (2019) stands out for its experimentation with voices and registers, and its powerful descriptions of otherwise unspoken rages and sorrows. On the porous boundary between rewriting and translation, the collection is made of thirty monologues that revisit Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the perspectives of its female characters. This article studies Wake, Siren as a work that enacts a renewal of the affective content of Ovid’s poem. Throughout, it offers occasional comparisons with Stephanie McCarter’s feminist translation of the Metamorphoses, as to highlight the particular potential of a poetic rewriting. Working between the lines, Nina MacLaughlin heightens or reveals emotional and poetical potentialities, for instance through her vivid descriptions, through a refusal of euphemism—particularly regarding scenes of sexual violence—, and through her use of lyrical enunciation.