Mac Mitchell wants to read Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad

"An absolutely magnificent collection of poetry. Clark has a really deft hand with poetic forms. I especially enjoyed the emotional tenor of the poems, the sensual imagery, the voice. "

"“[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."