Eating in the Underworld (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Eating in the Underworld
Richly colorful and intricate as a landscape by Salvador Dali, Eating in the Underworld is a striking and ambitious collection of poems. Belonging to a tradition of revisionist mythmakers whose contemporaries include Alicia Ostriker and Annie Finch, Rachel Zucker retells the story of Persephone's entry into the underworld with stylistic agility. Notes, letters, and diary entries written in the voices of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades reveal the complex inner workings of this triad, but Zucker foregrounds Persephone's story.
Contrary to traditional myth, Zucker claims Persephone as a writer who willingly enters the underworld: "I stepped in. Away from where the [End Page 202] body/of my mother is everywhere." While Demeter is commonly known as the benevolent goddess of the natural world, Zucker characterizes her as a manipulative and controlling mother, refusing her daughter individual identity. Persephone is initially naïve, both excited and unsure of her choice of Hades as partner. She asks: "Isn't this what I wanted? Sick of deciduous life,/the dappled light, pointillist neighborhoods." In contrast to her perceptions of Demeter's world, Persephone finds relief in Hades' underworld "where no one has invented comfort." Zucker thereby links Persephone's decision to enter the underworld to her desire to break from her mother's world, even if Persephone is not fully aware of it.
When Demeter writes a letter to Persephone pleading with her to come home, Persephone is unmoved. She is, however, increasingly attracted to the lush beauty of the underworld, as revealed through Zucker's painterly and musical language:
At home, the bells were a high light-yellow with no silver or gray just buttercup or sugar-and-lemon. Here bodies are lined in blue against the sea. And where red is red there is only red. I have to be blue to bathe in the sea. Red, to live in the red room with red air to rest my head, red cheek down, on the red table.
Demeter is unwilling to accept her daughter's willful defiance and imagines Persephone "screamed for mother" as she descended into the underworld. Persephone corrects her mother's inference that Hades kidnapped her, stating "But I did not scream." Demeter, rather than Hades, is cast as deceptive and manipulative. As Demeter repels her daughter, Persephone's attraction to Hades and his underworld grows.
In the underworld, Persephone envisions herself as a "consort" and "queen." She also acknowledges her status as merely an extension of Hades' influence. Though Zucker's work is revisionist, she plays off traditional myths that reveal the folly of gods and goddesses. Persephone not only comes to perceive the inherent limitations and trappings of her choice, but also recognizes her mother as one who creates and destroys, stating: "My king and I welcome the dead she sends us."
Persephone questions her status in the underworld; she also writes in a letter to Hades, "I no longer love you./I don't think I do." Persephone's bold missive shows her subtle movement toward her own power. The letter also reveals her awareness that her initial choice to enter the underworld was not necessarily for love of Hades, but rather an escape from her mother.
Living between two worlds, Persephone chooses to "turn some of these young girls/to birds" whose "singing will torture the gods." Using [End Page 203] her power as a goddess, Persephone will metaphorically free young girls, who constantly remind the gods of their manipulative errors. Because Persephone does not indicate which gods will be tortured, Zucker suggests all gods, including Persephone, Demeter, and Hades, will hear the unbearable wails of the young girls trapped in birds' bodies, ironically freed from their fate as women, daughters, mothers, and/or wives.
A sensual exploration of identity and transformation, Eating in the Underworld tells the story of a young woman both coming to and understanding the limits of her personal power. More complex than a coming of age tale, the book sheds new light on the stories we have come to know. While Zucker's work asks us to be skeptical...
