Aphrodite Made Me Do It

Aug 28

What Is Aphrodite Made Me Do It About?

Billed as a feminist retelling of the Aphrodite myth, this collection takes the goddess most people reduce to "beauty and vanity" and hands her back her complexity — desire, rage, self-possession, the whole mess of being a woman the world keeps trying to flatten into one thing. Mateer doesn't just write poems about Aphrodite. She writes through her, using myth as a mirror for her own reckoning with love, self-worth, and the body.

And this is very much a Trista Mateer book in form, not just content. She's an Instapoet at heart, and it shows in the best way: collage, edited photography, and tarot imagery woven right into the text. You're not just reading this collection. You're looking at it.

The Rocky Start (I'll Be Honest With You)

I'm not going to pretend the opening is flawless, because that's not how I do reviews. A few of the early pieces sit right on the edge of platitude — the kind of line that almost lands as profound and almost lands as a tote-bag quote. My stomach did a little squirm more than once early on.

Here's the thing though: I held on, and I'm so glad I did. The collection builds. What starts feeling like surface-level affirmation cracks open into something much rawer and much more specific to Mateer herself. By the back half, there's no mistaking this for generic empowerment poetry. It earns every bit of its reputation.

Artemis Made Me Do It: Book Two Hits Different

Poetry is personal by nature — you're always reading a little bit of yourself into it. But Artemis Made Me Do It, book two in the series, made me put the book down and just breathe for a second.

I'm not going to spell out what Mateer shares in these pages, because that's hers to tell and mine to sit with, not mine to summarize for clicks. What I will say: it's dark, it's humiliating in the way real honesty often is, and it's some of the most exposed I've ever seen a writer let themselves be on the page. I finished it in awe of her, and honestly, a little envious of the courage it takes to hand your worst moments to strangers and trust them with it. I hope I get there myself someday.

This is the throughline of the whole Myth and Magick series: Mateer isn't hiding behind the myths, she's using them to say the things that are hardest to say plainly.

Where the Series Goes From Here

If Aphrodite is the reckoning and Artemis is the confession, book three, Persephone Made Me Do It (2023), is the next chapter waiting for you once you've recovered from book two. I won't front like I've fully processed the first two yet, but if this series has taught me anything, it's that Mateer isn't going to ease up, and I wouldn't want her to.

The Verdict

Aphrodite Made Me Do It is a slow-build collection that rewards your patience, and Artemis Made Me Do It is the gut-punch that follows it. Together, this series is proof that vulnerability on the page is its own kind of power move. Read it. Sit with it. Let it wreck you a little. That's the whole point.

FAQ

Is Aphrodite Made Me Do It part of a series? Yes. It's the first book in Trista Mateer's Myth and Magick series, followed by Artemis Made Me Do It (2022) and Persephone Made Me Do It (2023).

Do I need to read the Myth and Magick series in order? There's no hard rule, but each book builds emotionally on the last, so reading Aphrodite, then Artemis, then Persephone in order gives you the fullest experience of where Mateer takes the vulnerability from book to book.

What is Aphrodite Made Me Do It about? It's a feminist retelling of the Aphrodite myth that uses the goddess as a lens for exploring desire, self-worth, and reclaiming a narrative usually flattened by other people's ideas about her.

Kathryn Nolan