"helen of troy avoids her school reunion"
Maria Zoccola's 'Helen of Troy, 1993' is 6 x 9 x 0.3 inches & 96 pages.
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Look: women are in high dramas, in all locations, in all times.
The Helen of Troy in this whisper slim poetry collection by Maria Zoccola strides around overgrown, lush strip-malled Sparta, Tennessee. Due to her circumstances (social, marital, logistical, geographical, familial), Helen doesn’t possess much power over her own life. The voice in her head, though: it’s powerful. It’s funny and haughty and resigned and then not resigned. It very much has the impact of the axe that makes the trees lie down.
In every poem, there is hard work and delicacy:
And in every title, strange assuredness:
And we’re very lucky! Maria Zoccola has recommended a favorite Purse Book of her own:
In 1949, Helene Hanff, a freelance writer in New York City, wrote a letter to Marks & Co., a second-hand bookstore in London specializing in rare books, with a list of books she hoped they could track down. The resulting twenty-year correspondence between the two on books, reading, life, and community, collected in 84, Charing Cross Road, is like a hug and a warm blanket for the soul of every book lover today. I loved it so much I wanted to wallpaper my bedroom in its pages.
Helen of Troy was the most recent Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Official Book Club Book. Here’s what a few Gals on the Go thought:
“I read Emily Wilson’s The Iliad translation earlier this year, and this is a good companion piece. I think both together would be a very nice gift for a particular type of person like me.” - Allie E.
“The setting was evocative, and I want so many Helen of Troy, INSERT YEARs: I want Helen of Troy, 1971, New York; I want Helen of Troy, 2016, Wyoming.” - Emily C., who read this on a ski trip in Wyoming !
“So blunt, so funny. I would cast Aubrey Plaza in this role. Helen should go on a cruise ship. Helen at Sea has such a nice ring to it.” - Tyler B., who had many favorite lines, including: “you start off all bowl-cut tube sock schoolhouse rock and end up a bitch, and I've never been able to clock when it happened.”
“She’s so powerful, I am frightened of her. I love this.” - H. C.
If you’d like to join the club, email pursebookletter@gmail.com.
