Mother, Daughter, Augur

Mary Simmons’s debut is a world unto itself: a dark storybook realm, lush and full of eerie possibility, a place outside of time where women move in different forms and pass on warnings and wisdom. In the spirit of a Victorian naturalist’s collection, this book brings together found elements from nature, folklore, mythology, ballet, and oral tradition, crafting a strange, kaleidoscopic beauty and complicating inherited definitions of femininity. As these poems blur dichotomies—maiden and witch, mother and daughter, friend and lover—they reach for a new vision of womanhood beyond the bounds of roles and expectations, one that is mystical, ethereal, a little dangerous, and inherently queer. In the process, they tap into deep currents of yearning, grapple with corporeality, raise larger questions about love and what lasts, and find meaning in the uncanny and the macabre. In these pages are insects and omens, wolves and birds and weird apparitions, Odile and Ophelia, even a seventeenth-century professional poisoner. Original, atmospheric, and immersive, this is a work like no other: a tour through an enchanted forest, a darkness that’s illuminating.