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Helen of Troy and Aphrodite: two classical paragons of beauty and love. These two figures have served as the inspiration for innumerable works of art in the Western cannon. In the twenty-first century, however, what do their stories provide but a reminder of the predictable roles which sexism has assigned women throughout history and literature?
            In this fresh new take on the two women’s stories, Jennifer Pullen takes us away from the familiar and deeper into their experiences. Rewriting Homer, Pullen revitalizes these two figures for the contemporary era. In A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue, Aphrodite maintains autonomy through her experience of her own body, even when forced into marriage. Helen of Troy, meanwhile, harbors a love for her maid, Esme, that no conquering hero can vanquish. Revisiting these classic stories with an inventive twist, Pullen shows that, with a little imagination, the classics may yet bear new insights.

The poems in Child in Amber are about loss—of innocence, of life, of a way of living—and about how we either accept these losses with reverence and dignity or are swallowed up by them. Some of the poems tell of childhood and coming of age. Others are fantastical recountings of people, places, and the things the speakers have left behind. But not forever. For at the heart of the book lies the conviction that through these songs, the singers may somehow retain what was essential and sacred.

In its darkest moments, the book reveals the despair we feel when confronted with the unavoidable fact of life—its passing. Kingdoms collapse in ruin, a lover departs, a hero is murdered, a world tumbles into oblivion. There seems no escape from tragedy and grief.

But at certain moments the speakers of these poems—a janitor watching a prisoner's execution, a man recalling a childhood trauma, soldiers fleeing a cruel regime—realize the necessity of salvaging that which would have otherwise been washed away, of embracing their lives, of placing the eternal quality of these experiences in amber.