Maria Zoccola for Helen of Troy, 1993 a sharp, visceral debut poetry collection reimagines Helen of Troy from Homer’s Iliad as a disgruntled housewife in 1990s Tennessee.
About the book
“Sinking into Helen of Troy, 1993 felt like the magic of finding a kindred spirit on the stool next to me in a dive bar. Zoccola’s poems kept me saying, ‘Yes, yes exactly.’ In her rendering of the rural South, she takes things I have felt only indistinctly and delivers them to me with sharp and beautiful and brutal clarity.” —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
“I cannot foresee a better book of American poetry published this year.” —Ron Rash, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Serena and Poems: New and Selected
Part myth retelling, part character study, this sharp, visceral debut poetry collection reimagines Helen of Troy from Homer’s Iliad as a disgruntled housewife in 1990s Tennessee. In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn’t the same thing as staying gone…
Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she’s never been seen before.
About the author
Maria Zoccola is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University and has spent several years leading creative writing workshops for middle and high school youth. Maria’s work has previously appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, The Sewanee Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Helen of Troy, 1993 is her debut poetry collection.
Helen of Troy, 1993
By Maria Zoccola
$18.00
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 9781668046333
