The Woman with a Cubed Head
$12.00 paper | 73 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-932826-66-4
Publication Date: Oct. 1998
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Poet Julie Moulds has battled non-Hodgkins lymphoma for years, through remissions, recurrences, and a bone marrow transplant. In The Woman with a Cubed Head, Moulds summons up an exotic band of kindred spirits to accompany her as she engages the forces of darkness. Here are the loves of her life, from Mary, Mother of God, to Baba Yaga, the evil Russian witch. More like the Monty Python Flying Circus than the Knights of the Round Table, assembled here are characters from folk tales, myth, Moulds’ favorite childhood books, icons of her Catholic upbringing, as well as her personae––Iva with steel-toed boots on, and the indefatigable Dog. In poems of wit, spirit, and attitude; in language that is sensual, fresh, and unabashed, Julie Moulds goes forth, tilting with real windmills.
“Julie Moulds’ poems are unflinching, funny, and wise. In her first book, The Woman with a Cubed Head, a pastiche of global revisionist myth-making, she explores the horror and brilliance of transformed bodies, especially those changed by illness. Julie Moulds is a 21st century Gretel––she’s been singed by smoke from the witch’s oven, then escapes, urgent to tell us all about it.”
—Denise Duhamel
“These are attractively human and vigorous poems informed by a wisdom that is striking in one so young. Full of courage and resilient humor, Julie Moulds’ poems sometimes have such energy that steam seems to rise from the lines.”
—Paul Zimmer
“For years I’ve looked forward to the publication of these poems, and Julie Moulds’ stunning new collection, The Woman with a Cubed Head, is certainly worth waiting for. The poems are compounded of grit, humor, and legend, and you will be drawn again and again to the stories they tell and the voice that tells them.”
—Nancy Willard
“Moulds crafts a universe from legends, myths, and fairy tales—Vikings and Valhalla, the Blessed Virgin, Renoir’s women, Chagall’s milk cow, Bugs Bunny, and Star Trek—but always we are aware that a life-and-death struggle is going on: chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, ‘anti-fungal mouth medications,’ the indefatigable love of a husband.”
—Vince Gotera, North American Review
Julie Moulds
Julie Moulds grew up in North Muskegon, and earned her B.A. at Hope College. She taught Children’s Literature at several colleges and taught Creative Writing to children. After a sixteen-year battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Julie passed away in 2008. A woman of extraordinary talent and impossible positivity, Julie’s poetry reflected her ability to be both brutally honest and yet find the fantasy and beauty in every situation.
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