Death of Persephone
A Murder
In Death of Persephone, award-winning poet Yvonne Blomer displaces the myth of young Persephone in Hades’ violent underworld, challenging modern concepts of gods and humanity.
Description
In Death of Persephone, the patriarchal myth of the maiden taken, raped, and made the potent and sexualized queen of the underworld is questioned, altered, flipped. Instead, we have Stephanie, a girl of seven, taken and raised by her Uncle H. who is obsessed by her, tries to control her, to keep her, to have her even as she blooms out from underneath him.
In poems both lyrical and narrative, a woman paints Hecate on a building, a Hyacinth Macaw flies overhead, a detective bumbles from crime to crime. This is a city with a vast underground where bats hang and paperwhites bloom, a city where men still rule.
Who sees what, who will pay, and who will survive in this ancient story altered at the core?