Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo

Highly original and moving

If you are a Frida fan, this is the best. Condensed from her diary, it helps you to understand her chaotic life. The pain, the love, the sensuous longings, and her thrice thwarted desire to have a child by her beloved Diego. I have her diary and her biography, but this is the best insight into the insides of the person who was Frida Kahlo.

After having read Kahlo's diary she kept in her final days, Maso became inspired by not only Kahlo's art, but by her vision of the world, and has created in "Beauty Is Convulsive" a marvelous series of prose poems. Incorporating aspects of Kahlo's life into meditations on suffering and pain as art, these poems weave a tapestry of Kahlo's artistic mind, which was deeply affected by her physical ailments that persisted throughout her life. This is not a biography, but rather a side dish for readers enthralled by Kahlo's (or Maso's, for that matter) powerful art. Reaching back to the styles used in her previous book "Aureole", Carole Maso has written a fascinating, complex, and unique book celebrating a passionate artist.

I must admit I'm not very familiar with Frida Kahlo's work, have never read anything about her, and am only vaguely aware of who she was and what she represented. With that background - or lack of one - I found this poetry difficult to follow. I'm sure it would mean more to someone who is already a fan.