What started as a small sequence of poems about the Starbucks logo grew to monstrous proportions after the poet fell under a siren spell herself. All Day I Dream About Sirens is both an ancient reverie and a screen-induced stupor as these poems reckon with the enduring cultural fascination with siren and mermaid narratives as they span geographies, economies, and generations, chronicling and reconfiguring the male-centered epic and women’s bodies and subjectivities.

Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, and whether considered an imaginary being or merely a person with extraordinary abilities, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations from ancient Greece to present-day Africa and Latin America. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography.

Sirens are sounds that confront us in daily life, from the sounds of police cars and fire engines to, less often, tornado warnings. Ideologies of sirens embody the protective, the seductive and the dangerous elements of siren sounds – from the US Cold War public training exercises in the 1950s and 1960s to the seductive power of the sirens entrenched in popular culture: from Wagner to Dizzee Rascal, from Kafka to Kurt Vonnegut, from Hans Christian Andersen to Walt Disney. This book argues, using a wide array of theorists from Adorno to Bloch and Kittler, that we should understand 'siren sounds' in terms of their myth and materiality, and that sirens represent a sonic confluence of power, gender and destructiveness embedded in core Western ideologies to the present day. Bull poses the question of whether we can rely on sirens, both in their mythic meanings and in their material meanings in contemporary culture.

"She considered her life: each aspect rested on another, was undercut by its arbitrary predecessor in a deconstructive chain leading back to the blank canvas, to defenseless impulse and unjustifiable whim. She felt seduced by despair, felt a void opening before her; what was this void? The apparition of suicide, the specter of her own death? No, it was the nothingness stretching forever beneath the seemingly concrete aspects of her existence, the eternal blank canvas upon which she had enacted her life (and to which she would eventually return)..." - from The Sirens The interconnected lives and trials of five characters - an Artist, a Seeker, a Seductress, a Dreamer, and an Academic - comprise a novel within this novel, while their author's struggle to achieve his lofty artistic vision forms the framing drama in this unconventional and experimental story of ambition, inspiration, and obsession. The novel's unnamed narrator has failed: the promise of his youth has been spent and ruined, and he fears that he will never achieve the great work of which he - and others - imagined him capable. It is only through a chance encounter with a strange and beautiful woman - a woman who seems to know more about him and his troubles than she should - that he feels himself newly inspired, capable of the ambitious work he once envisioned. But who is this muse, and towards what is she leading him? And what will he discover, when the quest for true expression lures him ever deeper into his own scarred and fractured mind? Written by Stavros Stavros Cover design by Tom Maven

a novel about life. a story of distress and dreams.

Birth from her mother womb as the mouth piece for God, evolved the anointed infallible, woman of God, Prophetess Antoinette M. White. As God molded her in His hands, He purposed her for His works and for His people. From the cradle to the pulpit this Prophetess was destined to bring forth the word of God with the anointing and power. Hearing the call in her tender years, Antoinette began her ministry with a Yes Lord, her am I, and sojourns her call in the path of ministerial greatness. With an ear to hear His voice, and her affections toward heavenly matters, this Prophetess is unmovable and unstoppable on her mission. In her childhood years it was evident Antoinette was a gifted child; peculiar, anointed and called to ministry. As the gift of prophecy manifested through her voice, and prophetic dreams became perceptible through full materialization, the mantel as Gods Prophetess was apparent. Prophetess White is the wife of the powerful Apostle Michael S. White Jr. and mother of six children. These two anointed vessels established Remnant Apostolic Prophetic Outreach (wwwrapoutreach.org).