Demeter Goes Skydiving

What if Demeter, the timeless fertility goddess of ancient Greek myth, slipped through a crack into the twenty-first century, shook off her ankle bracelets, corn tassels, and garlands, and began a tour of our improbable culture? Award-winning poet Susan McCaslin exercises the profound mother-daughter trauma forged in the Demeter-Persephone myth with unapologetic modernity. This sequence takes on a novel life all its own: Hades steals away the maiden into a cult/culture of distorted body image, addiction, high anxiety, and rampant consumerism. Mother Demeter must negotiate this alien world of health clubs, paparazzi, and so-called reality shows locked in spiritual winter. McCaslin's lyrics are by turns profound, hilarious, and devastating as she journeys to the heart of a mother's love for her daughter. Here is poetry that seeks ties to the past inside the present, poetry that speaks to us all.