Helen of Troy, 1993: Poems

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 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 “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.

Genres: Poetry, Mythology, Retellings, Fiction, Audiobook, Historical Fiction, Contemporary

95 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 14, 2025

Reviews

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This snappy, little book of poetry retells the famous Helen of Troy storyline as if she had lived as a housewife in the 1990's in Sparta, Tennessee.

This collection is quite the walk down memory lane - come on - I wasn't the only one with a pair of jellies! Might as well get out those 90's hemp chocker necklaces while we are at it!

A creative take on one of the greatest myths of all time!

*Thanks, Scribner, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text – Free/Zero/Zilch/Nada from Publisher

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[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘i didn’t know i was a person until i stopped being one.’

Myth and modernity collide as the larger-than-life figure of Helen of Tory is transported across time from the ‘wine-dark sea’ and heroic battlefields of legend to the ‘booze-dark sea’ of midwest depression amidst grocery store lines and and household duties in Sparta, Tennessee circa 1993. Maria Zoccola’s debut, Helen of Troy, 1993 is a witty and whimsical poetic retelling of Helen from Homer’s The Iliad where a small town housewife caught up in a sudden affair becomes the topic of local gossip as her life careens towards catastrophe. Cutting mythical figures down to size—our modern Menelaus is certainly no king but an emotionally stifled and apathetic husband she nicknames Big Cheese—while granting small lives a sense of grandeur not unlike the way William Faulkner was said to have written the lives of poor, small town southerners as if it was set on Mount Olympus. Mother to a child she isn’t mature enough to parent and ‘ rib-kicked by the world we wanted so badly to hold / in our hands,’ Zoccola’s character study of Helen is a heartfelt portrait of Southern womanhood and these poems come alive on the page as past and present combine in commentary upon each other and bursting with sorrowful beauty.

the spartan women discuss helen on troy

years ago—though she afterward recovered—
a girl was born who was not a swan.
thick-boned, earth-bound, she looked every minute
over her shoulder for the real life
she was promised, but her neck was too short
and she could not see it.          ah, helen.
when you’re dead we’ll cherish you again.
we’ll touch your face in our photo albums
and tell each other what you did, how you
climbed the tallest hill and sprang from the summit,
a shining smear of predestination
wingless, featherless, taunting your own fall.
we’ll remember how you launched yourself:
beautiful and suffering. mortal as a wound.

Readers will find both a familiarity and freshness in Zoccola’s debut poetry collection.The grandness of the gods may be absent here, though the formula is still recognizable with the often mentioned spartan women serving as a sort of Greek chorus spreading rumors about the land and bloody battlefields are transformed into football fields and Chuck E. Cheese. The poems appear exclusively in lower case letters, another sign of the grandeur reduced to quotidian malaise, and besides her clandestine romances the only excitement Helen gets is a new washing machine. It was the poem that sparked the entire collection Zoccola admitted in an interview with Southern Review of Books, ‘The poem seemed to appear in my notebook out of nowhere: this powerful, hilarious voice arrived on the page and demanded I listen to her.’ We see this right away in the collection. ‘if you never owned a bone-sharp biography / i don’t want to hear it,’ Helen quips as she quiets the masses to give her honest account of her trials and tribulations, ‘i want you silent. / I want you listening to me.’ The poems just took shape from there, Zoccolo says:

‘I realized almost immediately that this brand-new version of Helen was a housewife who felt stifled by her role and yet unable to picture a new path forward for herself. She was like a trapped animal nearly ready to chew her own leg off to escape, no matter the consequences…This collection is, ultimately, a story familiar to nearly everyone: an unhappy woman, a marriage in trouble, an affair, a community full of gossip. Pantheon of gods not included.’

The language still elevates the small town affair to a state of urgency as Helen feels herself become the target of gossip and the steady, dreary life she wished to escape no longer gives her feet a stable place to stand. Even the weather seems against here ‘where sliding / doors roar open to the snow’. While the collection is a playful array of anachronism from Piggly Wiggly’s to Motel 8, many of the poems have a universality to them that feels rather timeless. For instance, the poem about the affair:

from my place in his bed, the trees in the side yard
Burst into red and gold beacons
As if some nymph or muse pulled them leaf by leaf
From the hot folds of her body.
It was always this way, for me. The blazing went on
Until the dark came, and the dark went on
For much longer than that.

Zoccolo has a playfulness to the language though, deftly folding a modern feminist flair into the lanugage and imagery that leans on household duties to create the effect of a life stifled in the mundane, such as lines like ‘winter sewed me into her lungs.’ Yet Helen of Troy is still familiar underneath the 90s wardrobe complete with jelly shoes and in a car sucking down a donut instead of a great chariot and we learn 1993 Helen can turn heads just like in her Greek era. In the poem helen of troy is asked to the spring formal she writes ‘every bird in the sky begged to be my man. each worm in the dirt / longed to wife me. when i swam in shallow creeks, leeches encircled / my ring finger in black bands’ The whimsicality of language blending myth and modernity while still feeling comfortably at home in either era is rather effective and fun.

‘freedom a thing that first required a great fall. gods of this church. gods of all the others. i am falling and i am asking for so much: a hymn, a pardon, a soft place to land.’

Maria Zoccola’s Helen of Troy, 1993 is a life come undone and further unravelling with each yarn told by the locals. Helen makes an empathetic figure despite her many flaws, and Zoccola eases into a rather heartwrenching account of her having married too young and having a child before she was ready, ‘her daughter a lede she buries with both hands.’ It might not be the heroic epic of The Iliad, yet harshness and hard living is still present. ‘i needed something that thrived on neglect,’ she writes in helen of troy plants near the mailbox, a golden shovel poem that pulls from Iliad in translation by Robert Fagles, ‘i needed god / to send me the kind of life that would survive my mothering.’ Helen and her daughter survive, but at what cost? Helen of Troy, 1993 is a great debut and another excellent addition to the canon of myth retellings, making it fun for fans of Greek mythology or just anyone who enjoys a good poem.

4/5

helen of troy folds laundry in a dim room

i don’t know if you have ever started grown
Away from yourself.
              a ribbed shuck peeled down,
inch by inch, from the gold. shadows on the dirt:
corn bending toward the harvester, leaning forward
              in relief.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably should have brushed up on my Greek poems prior to reading this as my memory of Helen of Troy is scant. I loved the afterword and notes from the author as it really helped flesh out the story for me and see the connection between this retelling and the original stories of Helen.

I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can* · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars 🌟 🤩, Libby app (Overdrive was better)
-----

Different and fun :).

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars for Helen of Troy, 1993: Poems (audiobook) by Maria Zoccola read by the author.

This was a wonderful treat. I really enjoyed the storytelling that revolved around this central theme. And some of the poems were just so lyrical that I could imagine them being sung. It was so good that I immediately listened to it again. I’m really looking forward to reading more by this author.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of poetry. Before Helen of Troy, 1993, I read Hayden Carruth, Paul Muldoon, and Robert Hass (a favorite). Next up is Czesław Miłosz’s Poet in the New World.

So when I say Maria Zoccola’s debut might be the best thing I’ll read all year, I don’t say it lightly. I read poetry every day, and I’m constantly chasing those rare moments when poems feel so alive they practically breathe. This collection gave me that feeling, and I’m not the only one.

“Sublime. I cannot foresee a better book of American poetry published this year.”
— Ron Rash, poet and New York Times bestselling author of Serena

Zoccola’s collection follows a metaphorical Helen of Troy in early 1990s rural Tennessee. In the Afterword (which, honestly, might be worth reading first), she references Helen as an eidolon—a ghost-Helen—carrying an ancient torch into a setting that will feel familiar to anyone who grew up in a pre-internet Southern town (me).

The poems are often narrative and tell a story, but it’s the music of Zoccola’s language that I found stunning. She somehow mixes the colloquial and ancient, which could easily have veered off into gimmick, but in poem after poem, simply sings. Here’s a sample:

helen of troy meets the big cheese

as in the dampest part of winter, when rain
                             flushes down from a sky
with spring growing in its eye like a cataract
not yet thick enough to film,
wetting branches already spongy with snowmelt
and too old to bargain another year’s sap
                                  from the mother trunk,
and the wind blows with sudden exclamation
against the topmost bough,
                          and that bough tumbles down,
knocking here and there and falling square against  
a second limb, snapping it from the tree,
and both limbs
                       —sopped with rot and soft with death—
drop together to the pine-needle core of the forest floor
and lie one atop the other, unmoving and jointly locked,
decomposing by turns—just so
did i first lay eyes on him. just so did we begin.

This poem, while accessible, is also deeply layered and musical. You can hear it with all the senses - something great poetry should strive for. Note: I LOVE the inaccessible, too. John Ashbery all day.

If this is where Zoccola is starting, I can’t wait to see where she goes from here. Reading this felt like a discovery—like what I imagine it was like to first encounter Louise Glück or Anne Carson.

I’ll be coming back to this again and again. Simply outstanding.

[Hannah (hngisreading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen as housewife in Sparta, Tennessee in the 90s. Lyrical. Enchanting.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to write a review that isn't "Oh my god go read this right now!" but I'll try.

Helen is untouchable and unable to choose who reaches for her. Helen is an object of desire, of envy, of hatred. Helen is a semi-divine portent of doom to all who see her, a mirror showing every woman around her who they could and never should be.

Helen is a woman who left her home and came back, and not even she truly knows how she feels. No one knows if her feelings even matter.

Zoccola's poetry stands alone, creating a truly remarkable snapshot of the rural South, but when conversing with the epic cycle of Troy it explodes, past and present (or at least, much more recent past) bound together and placed just out of reach.

P.S. - Do yourself a favor and read the afterword.

[Kaleigh Veras · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful and unique poetry collection that keeps you immersed, just as its inspiration does. The prose was gorgeous and sucked me in from the start, and the way she has crafted a classic into a 1990s housewife is genius and WORKS. I am venturing into poetry more recently than usual, and this is right up my alley! Poetry with a narrative that keeps you hooked, with enough connection to the Epic and characters I hold dear to my literary heart. I will read anything Maria Zoccola writes in the future!

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

(review to come closer to pub date, per publisher's request)

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Maria Zoccola and Scribner for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[D]id Helen leave Sparta willingly, absconding in the night with her lover, cheering on the Trojans as they beat back the Greeks come to drag her home? Or was she abducted by Paris and kept prisoner behind the walls for ten long years while she wept for her former life? Or should we best understand Helen as nothing more than the pawn of Aphrodite, a doll handed to Paris as payment for a victory in a contest among Olympians? Or is Helen something else entirely, a mercurial, half-human entity loyal only to herself, the freest agent in the entire Trojan War because she is the only one not bound by honor? Helen is complicated. She defies easy answers and easy scholarship.”

It is in the light of this ambiguity that poet Maria Zoccola wrote this debut book of poems about Helen of Troy, set in 1993 Tennessee. Menelaus becomes “The Big Cheese.” Paris is merely “The Lover” that she meets while reaching for oranges at the Piggly Wiggly.

Zoccola brilliantly retells the story of Troy but with McDonald’s, Jurassic Park, abortion clinics, Chuck E. Cheese, Bill Clinton, and Pilot gas stations. She keeps the screws loose on the character of Helen. Is she to be pitied? Is she to be blamed?

I read this while rereading the Iliad. I throughly enjoyed it.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zoccola’s ability to sustain a persona voice through an entire collection is incredible. These poems are witty, punchy, and powerful. We had the privilege of republishing one of these at Poetry Daily a few months ago and it was great to finally read the whole collection!

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the more innovative poetry collections I’ve picked up! Definitely going to seek out more narrative and epic poetry collections.

[ThatBookish_deviant · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my third attempt to enjoy poetry, having a goal of reading poems at least once a month. I must say, this version of Helen of Troy,1993 elicites sympathy and disappointment. Like the mythical Helen, 1993 version is caught up as a helpless bystander in her life even as she seems to be the agent of destruction. Helen,1993 is stuck hovering about the small town world with no idea how to change her life. Whatever she does, her life rolls on collecting strikes and emptiness and good things undone.its hard to say whether Helen is in the fix that she is in due to her character or tight circumstances. It's hard to know if she should be encouraged or reviled. It seems it's a little bit of both.

[Isabella Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

i wanna screlt this whole book from the rooftops

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is updating the legend of Helen & plopping it down in the Tennessee town of Sparta (a fictional version, not the real one) in 1993 -- a bit of a rural Southern twist with four-wheelers, mud, hunting, Piggly Wiggly, Little Debbies, & Waffle House in the mix. It's funny. It's sad. It's sharp. Ultimately, it's a fairly cool modern adaptation that works. The author does include some notes at the back, citing some of the influences & connections; the notes might be better read first, especially for readers who aren't as familiar with Greek myths &/or the story of Helen/the Trojan War.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet Helen of Troy—a disaffected Southern housewife ready to reclaim her story and give you a piece of her mind! Debut poet Maria Zoccola imbues the archetypal narratives of Greek mythology with the lush, muddy landscape of 1990s Tennessee, complete with the judgmental small-town personalities who frequent football games, church potlucks, and Piggly Wiggly. You don’t have to be a mythology buff to enjoy this collection, but it’s littered with Easter eggs for those who are. I have never been so riveted by poetry as when Zoccola’s Helen came roaring onto the page in a four-wheeler demanding my attention. I followed her, gladly, from Sparta to Troy and back again.
//
1/20/25: Amazing on audio! Almost like getting to read these poems for the first time.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This piece retells Helen of Troy mythology though the lens of a housewife, confined too soon by the duties of motherhood and marriage. These poems express a deep yearning and desperation for a life beyond her present circumstances.
Moving, relatable, beautiful yet cut like a knife.

Thank you to Scribner Poetry for a finished copy of Helen of Troy, 1993.

[Shannon Weidner · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️

Truly an insane debut poetry collection

Standouts:
• helen of troy feuds with the neighborhood
• the spartan women discuss the local waterfowl
• helen of troy is asked to the spring formal

“they offered themselves, their mothers’ farms, their fathers’ bread, their bodies new-spun from childhood clay. come down to us, they howled to my window. we’ll pelt you like the forest fox. we’ll strip you clean. we’ll lick you raw. you’ll see why trees lie down for the axe. i listened. I went. i never came back.” (12)

• helen of troy avoids her school reunion
• helen of troy watches jurassic park in theaters
• the spartan women discuss tennessee
• helen of troy runs to piggly wiggly

“sing, muse, of the manager’s special, two-for-one yogurt cups, little debbies leaping for the cart.” (38)

• helen of troy makes peace with the kudzu
• helen of troy reigns over chuck e. cheese
• helen of troy explains to the gods

“i was one of the stream of girls melting back into our old lives, rib kicked by the world we wanted so badly to hold in our hands, nothing big, nothing lavish, nothing more than our due: one single calendar page of sunshine and bright sand, booze-dark sea stretching out into a song we can’t sing but have been humming all our lives” (64)

[The Aspie Author · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually got to meet the author at a conference and was given a signed copy of this poetry book. Since I'm not used to this writing style, I honestly didn't know what to think of this. The basic idea of Helen of Troy being a 90's housewife in rural Tennessee is very creative and some of the poems were really interesting to read. My favorites were "helen of troy watches jurassic park in theaters," "helen of troy recovers at st. francis," "helen of troy cleans up after the barbecue," and "helen of troy explains to the gods."

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the underlying concept of this collection.

“if i could shake myself awake, i don’t think i’d try.
good morning tennessee! when the great zirconi snaps
his fingers, you’ll find yourself unrecognizable. you’ll find
yourself of renamed genus, carbon altered, built for land
that’s not your own.”

[Caleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous. I'm not too familiar with the story of Helen, but I don't think it's needed to read this, just provides some context. Also, I love when author's narrate their own book in the audio format.

[Sarah Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

“gods of birds who speak in human voices, i do not want to watch her walk through a life of small mercies and small choices.”

and from here on out Helen will be of Tennessee not of Troy.

[Aaron Esthelm · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. These poems were heartbreaking and so damn good. Let me start by saying thank you to my friend at Black Walnut Books for giving me this ARC. I try to read as much poetry as I can. Many are so personal and individual that they sadly miss the mark for me. This collection does not do that. Despite not living the life of a woman tied down to early by responsibilities, I felt this in my sould. These poems cut to the heart of longing, love and a want for adventure. While it expertly inserts 1990s things like charles entertainment cheese and dunkaroos. Helen someone of myth and great renown being tied down to our mundane life of today is an artfull juxtaposition and I am here for it!

[Jaci Schreckengost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the review, a huge thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC!

Based in Sparta, TN, in 1993, Helen is alive. And life is, like it is for everyone, messy and confusing and concerning and beautiful and heartbreaking. Maria Zoccola weaves history and modernity seamlessly, asking questions that have been trapped inside all of the Helens' minds for millennia — and screaming the answers.

Zoccola’s Helen of Troy, 1993 is a masterclass in symbolism. Helen’s life in the early nineties is filled with chaos, bravery, love, pain, anger, and freedom (just to name a few), and I can’t wait for you to be able to experience it. This book will be released on January 14, 2025.

[Amanda Esthelm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of poems. Seeing Helen reimagined with blatant agency in any time period is interesting. I think it begs the reader to question what is assumed in classic characters lives as well as what is assumed of people’s lives in general. Looking at Helen in these poems, we see a woman who is dealing with heartbreak, motherhood, and marriage which is not dissimilar to what we know of Helen in the Iliad but very little time is actually spent with her and these thoughts. These poems do a great job bringing her to life in a complex and very humanizing way, through subjecting her to the brutality of life with the reader as her witness. Very well done

[Thomas W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brief but thoroughly enjoyable collection of poetry with a personally delightful home-state charm. (This Helen hails from beautiful Sparta, Tennessee.)

I could not recommend this harder if I tried. I loved this so much that I listened to the audiobook (provided by Libro.fm) three times in a row. The way Maria Zoccola captures '90s life in a small Tennessee town while also paying tribute to Greek mythology is astounding. It makes you appreciate how all things in life are cyclical. Even if you aren't a fan of poetry, give this some space in your life. You'll feel seen.

[Symaira Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Helen just wanted to be hot and single in peace and I respect that

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you do not have anything to say, you do not have to write a book. Nobody is forcing you to.