Alcestis in the Underworld: Poems

In Greek myth, Alcestis descends to the Underworld in place of her husband, a king, so that he may continue to rule the living. After she returns, she and her family live - presumably - happily ever after. But she has seen and learned things no one else knows. Alcestis in the Underworld articulates a poet's personal experience of civic duty: her life in Moscow as a U.S. diplomat, after growing up in then-USSR Ukraine.