The Death of Persephone: a murder by Yvonne Blomer (Caitlin Press, 2025)
Fusing Greek myth with the contemporary tropes of crime fiction hasn't been attempted in Canadian poetry before. And it's a challenging and essential exploration. As an aficionado, and sometimes a cringingly reluctant one, of cop dramas often featuring female corpses, I was compelled by Yvonne Blomer's The Death of Persephone: a murder (though why not, I wondered, The Murder of Persephone or a "murder mystery." and why also "Poems" and not "a long poem in parts" or a "novel in verse." Naming anything in a way that makes sense to everyone. So tough). At first, being unused to multiple personae in a book of poems (but where is Alfred/Alphonsine on the Dramatis list?), the reader may take a while to feel connected to DI Boca, his "loose shapeless suit," his "ten years" in homicide, or even Stephanie (a young woman, the daughter of Demeter of course, kidnapped by the abusive Uncle H or Hades, who takes her tr...