Song to the Siren

by Larry Beckett

Song to the Siren is the best of Larry Beckett's lyrics of the past fifty years, conceived as poems that can be sung. Most have been set to music and recorded. It includes every kind of ode, cycle, carol, hymn, ballad, serenade, erotica, blason, aria, blues, lullaby, elegy. Song to the Siren itself, written with Tim Buckley in the sixties, is a modern standard, recorded by This Mortal Coil, Robert Plant, Bryan Ferry, George Michael, Sinead O'Connor, Kitty Macfarlane, and over a hundred other musicians. It's been played in a number of film Moonlight Mile, Lost Highway, The Lovely Bones, Justice League. This is its first publication. The book includes an appendix with music sources and recording history for each lyric, and an essay on the genesis of Song to the Siren.

168 pages, Hardcover

Published July 21, 2024

About the author

Larry Beckett is a poet, lyricist, translator, literary critic, composer and musician. He breaks through genres and brings beauty and music to all his works.

While being best known for his lyrical work with Tim Buckley (notably "Song to the Siren"), his very first book, Songs and Sonnets from Rainy Day Women Press, was favorably reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. And both his poetry and lyrics continue to be regularly reviewed and praised in literary and music magazines including such prestigious magazines as Zyzzyva, Field, Shindig! and Mojo.

Larry continues to create both poetically and musically with one album Though We Have Only Love: The Songs of Jacques Brel and one book Romances Without Words / In Solitary out already in 2026, and Madrigals and Sonnets forthcoming coming in 2026 and 2027.

Notable earlier works include Beat Poetry, a study of the San Francisco renaissance, three book-length poems, Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, and Amelia Earhart published individually and then collected and published with seven others, as an epic, American Cycle . Larry’s translation work also is acclaimed: The Book of Merlin, along with Paul Verlaine’s Romances Without Words / In Solitary. His collected lyrics have also been published in his book Song to the Siren .

His work has been commended by Jonah Raskin, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Tom Clark, Ann Charters, Paul Wilner, David Young, William Meredith, W. S. Merwin and Charles Wright.

Reviews

[Lou]

This collection of the lyrics of Larry Beckett, written over more than fifty years, is a map of the constellations that he's crafted -- and there are so many that could shine just as bright as the wonderful and celebrated "Song to the Siren." "Old Beauty," "Dance for Me, Anna Lee," and "Boston" all speak to the same unfulfilled desire as "Siren," where "I Love a Waitress" makes flesh and blood of that mythical object of desire. And in "Bad Girl," we get a look at what that Siren might have become if the author had given her a nose ring.

[AMAO]

⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡

[Jessica Keesling]

Hard to read... layout was horrible, lack of spacing between words.

[Christopher A Cariad]

The ebook was not readable. The few poems I could read were great but not effort was put into formatting the book for digital form.

[Tamara Barringer]

As poetry it lacks depth. As lyrics the songs are halved and feel incomplete.