Helen of Small-Town Tennessee in “Helen of Troy, 1993” https://ift.tt/itD6v1A
Each poem of Maria Zoccola’s debut Helen of Troy, 1993 masterfully transports Homer’s larger-than-life tale into small town Tennessee in the 90s, with the titular Helen playing the ill-fitting role of a housewife. This collection, however, isn’t simply a rehashing of a well-known story but brings new emotional depth and intimacy for a modern audience, especially in reimagining Helen’s search for self-determination as a blatantly flawed but sympathetic woman.
Within Zoccola’s fictionalized version of Sparta, Tennessee, she honors the story’s mythological roots and blends it with the modernized setting. Instead of the battlefields of ancient Sparta and Troy, these poems burn with images of lonely country roads, tobacco fields, high school bleachers, and McDonald’s signs. Menelaus, Helen’s husband from the original tale, becomes “The Big Cheese,” while Hermione, her daughter, is referred to simply as “The Kid.” It is between these two characters that Helen finds herself trapped in a life of motherhood and marriage that she isn’t prepared for in a town where gossips haunt every corner. In the midst of the daily drudgery she wades through — folding laundry, cleaning up after barbecues — Helen comes to realize “i didn’t know i was a person / until i stopped being one.” Born from this dissatisfaction is the affair, the Iliad’s catalyst for the Trojan War and our Helen’s simultaneous downfall and only escape. Paris, named only as “The Stranger,” appears to her over a bin of oranges at a Piggly Wiggly, and Helen becomes consumed by him, whether out of love or desire for the alternate route he offers, asking, “how did the world / form a tunnel with this star at its mouth?” As Helen leaves her boxed-in life to follow him northward, she becomes the talk of the town and an enigma even to herself.
Interspersed with this main narrative are stories from Helen’s past, beginning with her birth — “from the shell of an egg” — and stretching between scenes of her high school life. These stories alternate absurdity with a dark frankness: one poem describes boys fighting in the front lawn for a chance to ask Helen to the spring formal, while another one shortly after sees Helen lying to her mother to drive alone to an abortion clinic. The collection also features poems aside from Helen’s point of view, occasionally speaking through the voice of the women of Sparta or in others through the voice of a swan. The result of this nonlinearity is a living story of epic proportions, while at its heart, it’s just as human and down-to-earth as the rest.
Helen’s complexity as a character is at the center of the collection. Her voice and self-assuredness steer the writing. Zoccola skillfully crafts a character who knows that readers will view her as selfish and yet demands their attention anyways. “i want you silent,” Helen says in the opening poem; “i want you listening to me.” From the beginning, Helen is a gripping force and a burningly three-dimensional person. In Zoccola’s sonically gorgeous verse, her misguided abandonment of her family becomes understandable as a woman longing for freedom and autonomy in a culture where it isn’t granted. In “helen of troy watches jurassic park in theaters,” Helen imagines herself as the T. Rex on screen: “i wasn’t mama i wasn’t woman i wasn’t / helen i was yellow teeth at night i was rip and tear and / mouth of blood i was something so large i shook the earth.” Helen is ravenous; she is a prime example of what constriction does to a woman who can’t help but take up space.
It would be easy to villainize Helen and write her off as remorseless, but Zoccola resists this, instead granting her sympathetic vulnerability. Her poetry explores Helen’s contradictory nature with lyricism and bluntness. This Helen would be the first to admit that she isn’t a great mother and yet believes that The Kid is “worth more in one unhappy scowl / than a whole chuck e.’s worth of pristine southern church ladies.” In fact, she wants a life better for her daughter than she had growing up: “i want each tooth spit up clean and delivered to her palm / to plant as she chooses, or not to plant, or to swallow / off her tongue like a cold and far-off star.” As we are drawn towards Helen’s captivating narrative, we are also invited towards reflection on it.
Along with challenging but beautiful poetic verse, Zoccola draws on different forms and styles to illustrate this sweeping story. For example, the collection features several golden shovels from the Iliad itself, along with a set of poems on town gossip that form a sonnet crown when combined. As a work of craft, this book would delight any fan of poetry with its rich writing style that begs you to sink your teeth into it.
While Helen of Troy, 1993 does necessitate a degree of familiarity with the original story, it doesn’t rely on it. Readers should not come in expecting a retelling of the Trojan War, but instead should expect a darkly immersive exploration of one woman’s life and psyche. The complexity of the narrative demands, just as Helen does, the full attention of the audience. Helen has been indicted and condemned by history, and yet Zoccola grants her this space to plead her case. In inviting us to consider a classic through a modern and incisive lens, Zoccola crafts a stunning debut that will leave you hungering for more.
POETRY Helen of Troy, 1993
By Maria Zoccola
Scribner
Published January 14, 2025
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