Leah Umansky speaks with author Carole Maso about her new book, Mother and Child, a dreamlike sequence of interconnected images, characters, and moments.

Read an excerpt of Mother and Child as it appeared in BOMB’s Summer Issue 120 here.

On her website, Carole Maso describes her process as follows: “Often I have had to resort to a form of my own making, exploring various literary, musical, philosophical and visual modes in order to get close to what my subject and my world require.” It is exactly this “making” of Carole’s that brings me to her work over and over again. She explores and rearranges her mediums. I admire her attention to language and imagery, eroticism and voice. Although Carole does not designate herself as such, I often think of her as a secret poet. Over the years, we have become friends and e-pen pals.

In the spring of 2011, Carole was named the VIDA’s Keynote Speaker at the AWP Conference in Washington, DC. She read from her forthcoming book, Mother and Child, which explores the mysterious and delicate bond between a nameless mother and child whose lives are transformed when a tree is split in half and a bat flies into their house. Both are tested, their lives becoming interwoven with the realms of the animal kingdom, magic, and religion. Their world is never the same; it takes on new meanings and the bond they share grows stronger.

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BOMBlog’s Word Choice features original works of poetry, fiction, and art. This edition of Word Choice, selected by Peter Moysaenko, features poetry by Leah Umansky and art by Andrew Schoultz.

“The tragic and the timeless; / the gestural lines: all a sheet of modern music. The pit; the war paint; the blackened / eyes. The wilderness is brackened. We are on the edge of something.” And so the poet makes the page flex, has her words unpack their maps. Trekking routes the verse hews, we find ourselves not lost or alone, but beside ourselves, beyond each other.

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Leah Umansky on the maritime poetics of Underwater NY’s reading at Poets House, featuring Matthea Harvey, KC Trommer and Cate Marvin among others.

Underwater NY’s poetry reading on August 24—featuring Matthea Harvey, KC Trommer, Katie Naughton, Danniel Schoonebeek, Allyson Paty, and Cate Marvin—could not have anchored down a better home than at Poets House, a poetry library tucked into the east bank of the Hudson River. Underwater NY is a sort of magical organization, but magical in a dark, unsettling way, their website populated with images of found objects: purses, animal bones, and teapots. And, of course, creepy doll heads.

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