Does anyone know of any good poems about Medusa?

Question

Kind of a poem, but more of a story type poem? If you get what I mean anyways. Not the one by Louise Bogan, hers is great and all, but not what I'm exactly looking for. Any poem sites or anything of that sort is greatly appreciated also, Thanks!

Answer 1

Medusa Blinked by by Daniel Hotard

She who through the monotone moonlight wandered,

Sure of step, her horrible eyes fixed forward,

Moved through city streets just to leave them lifeless,

Teeming with statues.

Waiting calmly, watching her turn to face me,

Gazes meeting, secretly I was eager

When through hers my irises sparkled darkness,

Spared and yet baptized.

Sorry - there's not much and it seems to be in French.

Medusa often appeared in Renaissance poetry, e.g. Ronsard's Second Livre des Amours (S. 79, 1555), but the stare which turned men to stone was often only a conventional metaphor for the lover's 'coup de foudre'. The comparison took on a deeper meaning during the nineteenth century. Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) and 'decadent' literature such as Lorrain's M. de Phocas (1901), provide illustrations of the dangerous fascination exerted by woman, with her deadly stare and mysterious hair. But it was Goethe's Faust Part I (1808) which supplied the real significance of this connection. During the 'Walpurgis night,’ Faust thinks he sees Margarita but Mephistopheles warns him that it is Medusa and explains that 'magic deludes every man into believing that he has found his beloved in her'.