Helen of Troy, 1993

Poems

By: Maria Zoccola

Narrated by: Maria Zoccola

Named a Best Book the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, Electric Literature, and more!

“Zoccola has beautifully and resourcefully reimagined this mythic material…Zoccola’s Helen has succeeded in joining her mythic forebear.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

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…

Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen’s isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: “if you never owned a bone-sharp biography… / i don’t want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me.”

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.

Brilliant, can’t wait to listen to this again

When she started talking about Gustav Moreau I set up and found a lump in my throat. There are those of us who have an instinct about honor culture, and recognize its manifestation in artworks wherever we go. I will listen to this and make drawings. I will let Maria guide me into a woman’s experience of our culture.

I see vision it just didnt land

so I made a deal with myself that if I hit 50% of a book, I can count it as done. This one was super short (an hour), so I got about halfway and called it. I really like the idea of revamping mythology — Helen of Troy’s arc had potential — but in practice it just didn’t land. The poems weren’t the best format for me. Honestly, I think this would’ve worked way better as a short story