Maria Zoccola

Jan 17, 2025 | entertainment-mag.com | Maria Zoccola

HELEN OF TROY, 1993: Poems, by Maria ZoccolaIn Greek mythology, Helen was the daughter of Leda, born from an egg after Leda was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. Helen married King Menelaus of Sparta, then ran off with Paris from Troy, precipitating the 10-year Trojan War as a Greek alliance fought to get Helen back.

Jan 17, 2025 | nytimes.com | Maria Zoccola

HELEN OF TROY, 1993: Poems, by Maria ZoccolaIn Greek mythology, Helen was the daughter of Leda, born from an egg after Leda was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. Helen married King Menelaus of Sparta, then ran off with Paris from Troy, precipitating the 10-year Trojan War as a Greek alliance fought to get Helen back.

Jan 14, 2025 | lithub.com | Maria Zoccola

Because I grew up a quiet, book-eating girl with unrestricted access to several branches of Memphis Public Libraries, I was well-versed in Greek and Roman myth long before ninth-grade English with Mrs. Bell. That was the year of Edith Hamilton and Robert Fagles, a whole class of fourteen-year-old girls punching through both the Iliad and the Odyssey in about six weeks. I already knew my gods and monsters, my heroes, my lineages.

Dec 11, 2024 | pw.org | Maria Zoccola

At a dinner table packed with writers and book people at the 2024 Western Carolina University Spring Literary Festival, held in April in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the cofounder of Gold Leaf Literary, Lauren Harr, told me that what she finds most interesting about a poetry collection is what has been left out of it. The maybe-poems, she meant. The almosts. The poems dropped on the floor early in the editing process, even before the manuscript is sent to contests and open reading periods.

Apr 3, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Maria Zoccola

as in the dampest part of winter, when rain flushes down from a sky with spring growing in its eye like a cataract not yet thick enough to film, wetting branches already spongy with snowmelt and too old to bargain another year’s sap from the mother trunk, and the wind blows with sudden exclamation against the topmost bough, and that bough tumbles down, knocking here and there and falling square against a second limb, snapping it from the tree, and both limbs —sopped with rot and soft with...