How a Poem Happens
Cynthia talks about the poem “Labor of Moles,” written “in the midst of a flurry of research and writing on the subject of birth and medicine which culminated in a manuscript called Paper Doll Fetus.
I uncovered a scholarly article about the early eighteenth-century physician John Maubray and his insistence that he had delivered a Dutch woman (and indeed later many women) of a mole-like animal while traveling aboard a ship. According to him, the animal had a “hooked snout, fiery sparkling eyes,” and ran about the cabin while others on board tried to catch it.”
Cynthia answers questions for Brian Brodeur’s How a Poem Happens interview series.