Great goddesses Life lessons from myths and monsters

In this haunting and vivid collection of poetry, a wide range of iconic Greek goddesses are imagined for the complicated and ever-powerful women they would be as mortals. The poems range in style: some are heavy with prose and dialogue, others spare and sharp. They are interwoven with illustrations of the famous ethereal figures drawn by the author, as well as highlights and quotations from other goddess-heavy pieces of literature everything from Homer's The Odyssey to Madeline Miller's Circe (2018). The pastiche that is born creates smart allegorical references to the #MeToo era, to toxic masculinity, to domestic violence, to the perils of motherhood, and to the unrelenting binds of female friendship. Greek gods and goddesses appear wholly human and vastly relatable. Readers won't need an encyclopedic knowledge of Greek lore to understand and appreciate the poetry. The book is rife with familiar faces like Athena, Artemis, and Demeter, but also includes an extensive glossary at the rear to guide readers through any gaps in understanding. What Gill has created is piercing, unforgettable, and wholly unique.--Courtney Eathorne Copyright 2019 Booklist

I lost a God once. It's easier done than people think. Forget a prayer once in a while or simply grow grief in your kitchen window along with the basil and rosemary. Somewhere inside my heart, I misplaced my faith, misunderstood my own origin story, became a person half tragedy, more misery, and I started to relish it. I revelled in this losing of everything that I thought I was, the lack of self-care; the drowning becomes such a needful thing when you think there is nothing left to look forward to. When my faith came back to me, like the forgiving water of a river to the pebbles that it smooths by constant weather and wear, I asked myself, what happens to the Gods when their people forget how to know them? What happens to their fearsome might when the fervent belief fades? Do you think they are still powerful when they become less than a memory? Or do you think without the power of prayer everything that makes them immortal is nothing but a façade? The Primordial Goddesses   'Verily at the first Khaos (Chaos, the Chasm) [Air] came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Gaea, Earth), the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos . . .' --Hesiod,Theogony 116 Chaos Edward Lorenz, the mathematician, father of chaos theory, defines chaos as: 'When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.' Which loosely translated means: No one knows how the consequences of our actions will truly play out, and try as we might, we will never be the masters of our destiny. And Chaos, who has been listening, as she always does to each of her creations, laughs because what else does the Ancient Being Who Created Creation do when a small, impatient primitive species that insists on quantifying everything tries to quantify the unfathomable by their small terms? And as she laughs, the cosmos ripples, And whole galaxies fall apart. Eurynome: The Mother of All Things   This is a lesser known story. It is a genesis entirely woman-whispered in the shadows when we meet in secret, plotting escapes from unwanted marriages or to untangle darker devil-deemed desires. They murmur, in the beginning of everything; from the bones of Chaos, rose a girl who built the universe, the stars, the planets, all because she was looking for a place to dance. And she waltzed the earth awake and the rhythm of her feet fermented the stars alive, the synchronised sorcery of her fingers brought the solar system to life, and the flow of her arms looped aro Excerpted from Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.