Maria Zoccola Helen of Troy, 1993

Annotation

"In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, in the early nineties, Helen makes a drastic choice to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a small-town housewife. But in this world of community and tradition, leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in the lush natural world of Middle Tennessee, this debut poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality wars against the social rigidity of her community. 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, births 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." Part retelling, part character study, Helen of Troy, 1993 is a sharp, visceral debut poetry collection that blends the line between myth and modernity with an unforgettable voice that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before"--