Agrippina the Younger

"A moving extended meditation on how we attempt to understand our relationship to the historical past. Arterian offers the reader an echo of the explorations that have come before, the complexities, paradoxes, and inadequacies of 'making do' with the history we have." - Mary-Kim Arnold, author of The Fish The Dove

"Diana Arterian was my classmate. With Agrippina the Younger, with both its elegance and courage to embrace the history of our darkness— and with such aesthetic muscularity - I am learning from her still. By stepping toward, instead of running from, the ancient histories of women-hatred, Arterian somehow excavates these legacies with a language and lyricism that holds our horror and beauty in sublime balance. She does not look away . . . " - Robin Coste Lewis, author of To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

"In exquisitely braided prose and verse, Diana Arterian gives us an enthralling study of the often maligned and more often overlooked Agrippina the Younger. Necessarily suspicious and critical of official narratives, Arterian dares to 'pluck the thread' of time-worn accounts passed down to us from patriarchy. In this stunningly lyrical book - rigorously researched and rigorously imagined - we hear history as lies but also lyre: an instrument, in Arterian's hands, attentively tuned and pitch perfect with song." - Brandon Som, author of Tripas: Poems