In Rachel Zucker's re-imagining of the Greek myth, Persephone is a daughter struggling to become a woman. Unlike the classical portrait of a maiden kidnapped by a tyrant, Zucker's Persephone chooses to travel to the Underworld and assume her role as Hades' queen. Caught between worlds-light and dark, innocence and power, a mother's protection and a lover's appeal-Persephone describes the strangeness of the Underworld and the problems of transformation and transgression. The arrangement of Zucker's poems reflects Persephone's travels between the Underworld and the Surface. Both spare and lyrical, they are written as entries in Persephone's diary and as letters between Persephone, Demeter, and Hades. The language-strange, urgent, direct-is pulled and changed as Persephone journeys from one world to another revealing the struggle of unmaking and remaking the self.
- ISBN10 0819576131
- ISBN13 9780819576132
- Publish Date 15 May 2015 (first published 26 February 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher University Press of New England
- Imprint Wesleyan University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 80
- Language English