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Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo
Beauty is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth century's most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).
At the age of nineteen, Kahlo's life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self-portraits. In 1928, at twenty-one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. The forty-one-year-old Rivera, Mexico's most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlo's personality and by the authenticity of her art, and the two soon married. Though they were devoted to each other, intermittent affairs on both sides, Frida's grief over her inability to bear a child, and her frequent illnesses made the marriage tumultuous. This prose poem is typical Maso--vigorous, daring, always original. She brings together parts of Kahlo's biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlo's paintings.
"Maso's precise and poetic prose ... brims with emotion, imagination, intelligence, and beauty." —Review of Contemporary Fiction
"... a supple, discerning, and haunting prose poem, a biographical meditation that elegantly charts Kahlo’s epic resiliency, artistic daring, unrelenting suffering, soul-saving 'sense of the ridiculous,' and glorious defiance. Maso’s spare yet lyric tribute, a genuine communion, is a welcome antidote to the mawkishness and sensationalism that is starting to blur our appreciation for Kahlo’s pioneering art and incandescent spirit." —Booklist
At the age of nineteen, Kahlo's life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self-portraits. In 1928, at twenty-one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. The forty-one-year-old Rivera, Mexico's most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlo's personality and by the authenticity of her art, and the two soon married. Though they were devoted to each other, intermittent affairs on both sides, Frida's grief over her inability to bear a child, and her frequent illnesses made the marriage tumultuous. This prose poem is typical Maso--vigorous, daring, always original. She brings together parts of Kahlo's biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlo's paintings.
"Maso's precise and poetic prose ... brims with emotion, imagination, intelligence, and beauty." —Review of Contemporary Fiction
"... a supple, discerning, and haunting prose poem, a biographical meditation that elegantly charts Kahlo’s epic resiliency, artistic daring, unrelenting suffering, soul-saving 'sense of the ridiculous,' and glorious defiance. Maso’s spare yet lyric tribute, a genuine communion, is a welcome antidote to the mawkishness and sensationalism that is starting to blur our appreciation for Kahlo’s pioneering art and incandescent spirit." —Booklist
184 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 12, 2002
7 people are currently reading
332 people want to read
About the author
Carole Maso
24 books171 followersCarole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives often labeled as postmodern. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College in 1977. Her first published novel was Ghost Dance, which appeared in 1986. Her best known novel is probably Defiance, which was published in 1998. Currently (2006) she is a professor of English at Brown University. She has previously held positions as a writer-in-residence at Illinois State and George Washington University, as well as teaching writing at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 3, 2023
4.5 but only because nothing can reach the same heights that Ava does…
Carole Maso destroys me and pieces me together all at once - every time. I’m grateful.
Carole Maso destroys me and pieces me together all at once - every time. I’m grateful.
March 26, 2017
Carole Maso's a marvelous collagist, and Beauty Is Convulsive finds her fusing Frida Kahlo's imagery and language with her own lyrical fragments, all of which coheres into a fluid, visceral whole. Representative passage: "Once again desire has made a ruin of us. A pile of loamy soil—a dome; or concave—a grave. And sweet pain is a tablet in your hand dissolving, a host beneath your tongue. A sugary skull. A rose. Where does your life go?"
April 11, 2009
This book has layers of meaning for those that know the intimate details of Kahlo's life. My family, originally from Mexico City, knew her so I was able to verify some details. For example, she talks about the baby in the jar. My mother recalled the actual remains of her baby in a jar on the mantle when she was there for a party. But for those that didn't know her life with Diego, "the biggest liar I have ever known," according to my grandmother, this book seems like a never ending cadence of blood, pain, and disfigurement. The writing is much like the author declares at the end, a communion between the diaries, the bibliographical details and her own psyche. Several of the poems are repetitive in their themes and at some point one loses track of time so it all blurs. Frida was all about her love of beauty. Her life was also orchestrated by the moments, no zen here.
December 1, 2019
I was super excited to win a copy of this book about Frida Kahlo because I visited Mexico City this year and before my trip I did a google deep dive into Kahlo's life. I did not know that Frida was so interested in Medicine as a career path and that she was such a voracious reader. Due to an accident that left her bed ridden she reconsidered her medical career path to maybe become a medical illustrator which would merge her two interests in the arts and sciences. Her career as an artist evolved from there.
This book is written in prose poetry and contains text that is pieced together from Kahlo's diaries, letters and medical documents. There was so much more I learned about Kahlo's life in such an intimate way through this book. The writing style might not be for everyone but I think it is a beautifully written tribute to the life and work of an amazingly inspirational woman. This was first published in 2002 and is now newly reissued by Counterpoint Press and is releasing December 3rd, 2019.
Disclaimer: I won this book through a giveaway from Counterpoint Press. This in no way impacts my review. All opinions are my own.
July 2, 2025
i love you frida kahlo
August 27, 2012
Whenever I read Carole Maso, I start writing like her. And so it’s the words and impressions that linger, hovering above the page, insistent, repeating: Broken. Fragment. Meditation. Accident. Votive.
Composed in Maso’s unique poetic and fragmentary style, Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo is many different things at once: a highly condensed biography of Kahlo’s life, a voice for her words, and Maso’s artistic “conversation” with Kahlo.
Beauty is Convulsive samples freely from biographies of Kahlo among Maso’s own writing and impressions. We’ve become used to this style from filmmakers and rap artists, but it is still unusual in books, where we’re accustomed to more singularity of voice, clear quotes and citations with footnotes and page numbers. Maso’s rendering of Frida Kahlo requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a willingness to experience Kahlo’s life as we abandon our usual literary constraints.
The book focuses on three defining elements of Frida Kahlo’s life. The first is a serious bus accident in her adolescence which had repercussions throughout her entire life, including chronic pain in her back, legs and feet, and an inability to have children. Her subsequent miscarriages make up another recurring theme. And the third is her marriage to fellow painter Diego Rivera.
Maso’s sometimes halting, disjointed writing style suggests a life lived in fits and starts, as in Votive: Child:
“Its birth certificate filled out in elegant scroll His mother was
Frieda [sic] Kahlo
take this sorrow: child
I would give you fistfuls of color
if only
alegria
I would have given you.
Because I wanted you come to me
the cupped butterfly, painted black.” (19)
One of the hallmarks of Carole Maso’s writing is repetition of words and phrases, and Votive features in the title, as well as in the text, of many of the pieces in this book. Votive: Vision, Votive: Courage, and Votive: Sorrow, are among the pieces that lead the reader on a meditation, a wish, a prayer on elements of Frida Kahlo’s life, almost as if you are walking the stations of the cross. In between the Votives and other pieces are short epigrammatic quotes from Frida herself, each entitled “Accident”, which serve as interludes:
“I am not sick. I am broken.
But I am happy as long as I can paint.” (65)
“Nevertheless I have the will to do many things
and I have never felt “disappointed by life”
as in Russian novels. (75)
In her choice and placement of text from her journals, Maso not only gives voice to Frida Kahlo, but also highlights Kahlo the poet, particularly when writing about Diego:
“From you to my hands I go all over your body, and I am with you a minute and I am with you a moment, and my blood is the miracle that travels in the veins of the air from my heart to yours. . . Diego, nothing is comparable to your hands and nothing is equal to the gold-green of your eyes. . . .”(34-35)
Lest you start to believe that Maso is merely a collage artist, arranging the words that Frida has written and what others have written about her, Maso intertwines her own meditations on the artist’s life and her work:
“She remembers when her mouth -- pressed to the ear -- to the
hum of the paint the blood:
don’t kiss anyone else
magenta, dark green, yellow
And she watches him.” (91)
Add to this quotes from others who knew Frida Kahlo, including Diego himself, Alejandro, who was involved in the accident with Frida, and notes from her doctors, and gradually, contemplatively, you get a picture of the woman and the artist, and the effect she has on those who wish to enter her world.
(Originally published in Rain Taxi Review of Books, 2003)
Composed in Maso’s unique poetic and fragmentary style, Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo is many different things at once: a highly condensed biography of Kahlo’s life, a voice for her words, and Maso’s artistic “conversation” with Kahlo.
Beauty is Convulsive samples freely from biographies of Kahlo among Maso’s own writing and impressions. We’ve become used to this style from filmmakers and rap artists, but it is still unusual in books, where we’re accustomed to more singularity of voice, clear quotes and citations with footnotes and page numbers. Maso’s rendering of Frida Kahlo requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a willingness to experience Kahlo’s life as we abandon our usual literary constraints.
The book focuses on three defining elements of Frida Kahlo’s life. The first is a serious bus accident in her adolescence which had repercussions throughout her entire life, including chronic pain in her back, legs and feet, and an inability to have children. Her subsequent miscarriages make up another recurring theme. And the third is her marriage to fellow painter Diego Rivera.
Maso’s sometimes halting, disjointed writing style suggests a life lived in fits and starts, as in Votive: Child:
“Its birth certificate filled out in elegant scroll His mother was
Frieda [sic] Kahlo
take this sorrow: child
I would give you fistfuls of color
if only
alegria
I would have given you.
Because I wanted you come to me
the cupped butterfly, painted black.” (19)
One of the hallmarks of Carole Maso’s writing is repetition of words and phrases, and Votive features in the title, as well as in the text, of many of the pieces in this book. Votive: Vision, Votive: Courage, and Votive: Sorrow, are among the pieces that lead the reader on a meditation, a wish, a prayer on elements of Frida Kahlo’s life, almost as if you are walking the stations of the cross. In between the Votives and other pieces are short epigrammatic quotes from Frida herself, each entitled “Accident”, which serve as interludes:
“I am not sick. I am broken.
But I am happy as long as I can paint.” (65)
“Nevertheless I have the will to do many things
and I have never felt “disappointed by life”
as in Russian novels. (75)
In her choice and placement of text from her journals, Maso not only gives voice to Frida Kahlo, but also highlights Kahlo the poet, particularly when writing about Diego:
“From you to my hands I go all over your body, and I am with you a minute and I am with you a moment, and my blood is the miracle that travels in the veins of the air from my heart to yours. . . Diego, nothing is comparable to your hands and nothing is equal to the gold-green of your eyes. . . .”(34-35)
Lest you start to believe that Maso is merely a collage artist, arranging the words that Frida has written and what others have written about her, Maso intertwines her own meditations on the artist’s life and her work:
“She remembers when her mouth -- pressed to the ear -- to the
hum of the paint the blood:
don’t kiss anyone else
magenta, dark green, yellow
And she watches him.” (91)
Add to this quotes from others who knew Frida Kahlo, including Diego himself, Alejandro, who was involved in the accident with Frida, and notes from her doctors, and gradually, contemplatively, you get a picture of the woman and the artist, and the effect she has on those who wish to enter her world.
(Originally published in Rain Taxi Review of Books, 2003)
January 26, 2013
http://wineandabook.com/2012/07/30/re...
"Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus, probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered gold. This package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding body of Frida. When people saw her they cried, "¡La bailarina, la bailarina!" With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she was a dancer." (p.33)
In college, I was three measly credits shy of a double major in Art History, and any lecture that focused on the work of Frida Kahlo was always a highlight. As an artist and as a woman she was vibrant, outspoken, honest, raw and incredibly talented.
Carole Maso's poetic exploration of Kahlo's life did for Frida lyrically what Julie Taymor did for her cinematically. Both were haunting, dreamlike, and pitch-perfect in capturing Kahlo's aesthetic.
Maso drew from Kahlo's own diaries, medical documents, and letters as well as her biography to craft her poetic exploration of/dialogue with Kahlo's life and art. I found Beauty is Convulsive incredibly hard to put down, as Maso managed to really appropriate Kahlo's use of startling, jarring, hallucinatory imagery in her work to create a piece that was moving and visceral.
"Beauty is convulsive or not at all." (p.124)
Rubric rating: 8.5 I am adding Room Lit By Roses and Break Every Rule: Essays on Language, Longing, and Moments of Desire to my epic "to read" list, and I'm adding Beauty is Convulsive to my "must purchase" list.
"Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus, probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered gold. This package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding body of Frida. When people saw her they cried, "¡La bailarina, la bailarina!" With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she was a dancer." (p.33)
In college, I was three measly credits shy of a double major in Art History, and any lecture that focused on the work of Frida Kahlo was always a highlight. As an artist and as a woman she was vibrant, outspoken, honest, raw and incredibly talented.
Carole Maso's poetic exploration of Kahlo's life did for Frida lyrically what Julie Taymor did for her cinematically. Both were haunting, dreamlike, and pitch-perfect in capturing Kahlo's aesthetic.
Maso drew from Kahlo's own diaries, medical documents, and letters as well as her biography to craft her poetic exploration of/dialogue with Kahlo's life and art. I found Beauty is Convulsive incredibly hard to put down, as Maso managed to really appropriate Kahlo's use of startling, jarring, hallucinatory imagery in her work to create a piece that was moving and visceral.
"Beauty is convulsive or not at all." (p.124)
Rubric rating: 8.5 I am adding Room Lit By Roses and Break Every Rule: Essays on Language, Longing, and Moments of Desire to my epic "to read" list, and I'm adding Beauty is Convulsive to my "must purchase" list.
December 15, 2017
Maybe you have to have some familiarity with Kahlo's work/aesthetic and her biography to fully appreciate this collection, but you don't have to know too many details. Maso herself provides what you need by weaving together Kahlo's journals, biographical accounts, and imagined perspectives. I cannot imagine a more effective use of form for this work. It is fractured, cyclical, meandering, and surprising. What better way to creatively enter the psyche of an artistic genius who battled physical and emotional torment, but was also so full of playfulness, irreverance, and life?
April 27, 2008
she reminds me of jeanette winterson. this reminds me of written on the body. it has such wonderful flow and she jumps so flawlessly between herself, frida and diego. oh how i loved this book.
it was just what i needed.
it was just what i needed.
May 5, 2011
Carole Maso is an amazing writer who captures the passion of Frida Kahlo so vividly. "I experience Beauty not so much as a book but as a communion." from Author's Note p.170. To be in communion with one's subject or character is what I believe an artist or a writer strives for.
January 17, 2008
Possibly the worst book that I have ever read!! Run now...
January 23, 2008
Quite possibly one of the worst books I've read. Too much information is assumed to be held by the reader.
March 25, 2009
This book made me cry on an airplane.
May 4, 2009
Beautiful.
August 20, 2011
Hated it. Vapid, self-indulgent. Found repellent author's insistence on bring erotic imagery into author's little girl years.
October 2, 2015
Wonderful. Great reflections on the life of Frida, her passion with Diego, her failed pregnancy attempts, her miscarriages, her pain, her suicide.
March 13, 2020
I have a huge new appreciation and respect for Frida after visiting her home in Mexico City and wonderful frida conversations with our local guide Maria. This book was a bit choppy for me as blends fridas diaries etc with the authors words. I was able to follow along better after visiting , watching movie and knowing the characters of frida life. This is more a tribute- the message of frida’s last pairing Viva la vida ( life life to the fullest / end etc. - just live ). Comes through. But I feel that message more being here in Mexico City. Frida suffered such pain and did her best to live her life how she wanted to with great vigor and passion.
July 18, 2024
I just finished the bio by Hayden Herrera and Frida’s diary and thought I would pick this up since I’ve read a few by Maso and this just stinks - it’s like Maso is just taking notes like for a class - a poetry or creative class. I’m trying to connect to this book and just cannot! Maybe if I didn’t read the bio I would love this … I cannot believe someone published this. I cannot believe that some of you loved this and even cried reading it … ugh.
September 21, 2020
This unusual book was largely written as a "prose poem" (I guess), which didn't suit me. However, I did learn more about Kahlo, including sometimes gory specifics about her medical problems. Not recommended.
March 20, 2024
lovely collage; maso is attentive to what words hide within words (pain within paint, the black of night vs the black of a soon to be amputated leg). i wd have loved this in 2016 or so. now i find it a little too affected. i will be checking out ava
August 5, 2022
It is a bit too poetic for my taste but I love everything to do with Frida so enjoyed the extra bits of information I picked up.
June 26, 2023
Very fast read! I finished this book in a day!
August 31, 2023
Reads more like poetry than a biography but that’s why I picked it up. I am I. The fence about how I feel about biographies that read more like poetry.
December 24, 2025
I like it but I wasn't sure who was writing Frida or the author? sometimes it sounded like it Frida other times the author. I liked the Doctors note about Frida condition.
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November 19, 2023Hallucinatory and dream-like are how Maso describes Frida Kahlo's end of life journal. And the same description could be applied to this book of poetry. A dream-like dance through Frida's life, I was enthralled throughout and devoured this book in about two sittings.
Read
March 15, 2012Kate Braverman’s poetic dynamism in THE INCANTATION OF FRIDA K. makes Carole Maso’s self-defined “prose poem" appear sadly wanting in terms of style. There’s little genuine transformation of subject matter, as Maso herself seems to recognize when she concedes that her book is “utterly reliant” on Herrera’s work—not to mention the fact that she quotes sizable hunks of THE DIARY OF FRIDA KAHLO.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
October 17, 2011
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.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews