Bearing the Body of Hector Home
by Robert Cooperman
Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp

“Bearing the Body of Hector Home”
Poetry
FutureCycle Press, 2023
$15.95, 82 pages
ISBN: 978-1952593352

A little past the midway point of Robert Cooperman’s latest re-working of Homer’s great epics, as the Trojans prepare to dispatch the slain hero Hector to the afterlife, Hippomanes, Hector’s horse breaker, remembers the fear in Hector’s eyes as he got himself ready to battle Achilles one-on-one. Both know Hector is doomed. So why does he do it? Why does he go ahead with the fight? The simple answer is honor. A fool’s errand? The poem ends:

Can one feel its weight like precious stones,
caress it like the breasts of one’s beloved,
or gaze into it like the proud brown eyes
of the champion stallion one has trained
with a gentle, patient hand and soft words?

No, honor’s nothing in this our one life.

As in all of Cooperman’s re-imaginings of Homer’s quintessential heroic tales of glory in battle, bloody heart-wrenching reality comes crashing in against the noble ideals of the lyric storyteller. For while we experience again the solemn pageantry of the funeral rites for the slain hero, a pickpocket is weighing his opportunities, a man tries to escape the doomed city, a prostitute mourns her own pathetic life, a royal chef remembers Hector not for his heroic feats but for never sending back the dishes he, Ilex, served him. This is the true reality of war, the mundane episodes that are never recorded but nevertheless form the warp and the woof of daily existence. And all of them, Greeks and Trojans alike, recognize that, for all her magnificent beauty, Helen is not worth all the effort.

As another obscure character, Memna, the wife of a tavern owner, confesses, she did not give a damn about Hector.

I lied that I wept for fallen Hector.
It was for your war-slain brother I sobbed.
Husband, we’ve been wed for more than three years
And never have I felt new life’s stirring.
Then Crillus, your younger brother, snuck back
from his latest adventure beyond Troy,
his mysteries a love potion: I’d brush
his arm with breasts that ached to burst with milk.

But of course the grief of King Priam and his wife, Hecuba, Hector’s mother, and Andromache, Hector’s widow, are real and heartfelt. His widow reflects that she thought Hector was virtually immortal, that “Until I saw the pyre’s flames licking you / like a hungry cat,” she was sure they would “live out our contented days” together.

But your pyre crackled, tears gouged down my face;
without thinking, I drew my viper blade,
to make the red slash and join you in death.

Her brother-in-law, Paris (“that meddler”) stays her hand, and she attempts to gouge out his eyes. The emotions run deep. Paris is as universally scorned as Helen.

Cooperman begins the story just as Achilles has killed Hector and is dragging the corpse around the walls of Troy. The first poem is in the voice of Hector’s spirit, taking stock of the situation, acknowledging his cowardice as he fled from the mightier warrior, but mainly feeling a resigned sadness that he will no longer be able to protect his wife, and he basks in the aromas that make up sentient life, the smell of roasting meat, his wife's sex, even the smell of animal shit. These simple sensations are no longer possible. Then, as in his other books in this series – Troy, Lost on the Blood-Dark Sea, and The Ghosts and Bones of Troy – Cooperman relates the story from various points-of-view. These speakers are both legendary (Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Diomedes, Cassandra, Priam, etc.) and obscure (a mule cart driver, a butcher, a tax collector, various prostitutes and criminals). They all expand our view of the main event.

Even Briseis, the concubine whom Agamemnon stole from Achilles, thus setting in motion Hector’s slaying of Achilles’ companion Patroclus and thus Hector’s own death, has her say. She exults in Priam’s sorrow, alleging he’d sexually molested her when she was a vulnerable young woman. No tears for Hector, either, who, like Jim Jordan, turned a blind eye on the abuse.

Finally, in the epilogue, “The Ghost of Hector Bids Farewell,” Hector's bitterness comes out in the concluding sonnet. He acknowledges he lived by a code, one that “sets heroes apart,” indeed,

But if I had it to do once more,
I'd have slain Paris and his fucking whore.

So much for that code of “honor,” indeed. Hippomanes was right all along. 

Robert Cooperman's tales are gripping in their gory detail and human emotion. Bearing the Body of Hector Home is a worthy addition to his oeuvre.