Review by Ros Howell A recent reviewer of Jacqueline Rose’s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty writing in The Guardian online (herself a mother) appeared to reject to one of the central arguments in Rose’s book that “Unless we recognise what we are asking mothers to perform in the world – and for the world- we will continue to tear both the world and mothers to pieces” (2). That reviewer, Tessa Hadley, asked “Does anyone ‘outside of advertising executives’ really idealize motherhood to the detriment of us all? Aren’t mothers as much architects of the divide and conquer…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Janet McCann This collection is a spooky delight that combines poetic prose pieces with flowing, evocative drawings to give an impression of those who participated in the Salem Witch Trials—not only as they were at the eighteenth century event, but as a parallel to the people and forces of our own time. Each section takes up a different participant, hunters and hunted, and gives a look into a soul. The interior monologues illustrate the conflicts that arise from flawed human nature and its greatly flawed institutions. Linda Lerner is a well-known New York City poet who has more…
M.A.M.A. (Mothers Are Making Art) is a collaboration among ProCreate Project, The Museum of Motherhood, and Mom Egg Review. Marketa Senkyrik- Art mother’s diary (for Kaya) 2017-2018 hand-bound diary / drawings – fine-liner, watercolour crayons, crayons My mum has plenty of photo albums – one from each holiday, one from each Christmas… When I am visiting my parents, we often look at the photos together. I like to draw diaries. They are a bit like photo albums – they bring back memories. This is a very special one. It’s for Kaya. To remind her how it was when she was…
Review by Grace Gardiner It might be expected to begin a review of Lesléa Newman’s newest poetry collection Lovely by saying that the poems that comprise this collection are themselves lovely, but this collection seems a poignant, playful, and earnest place to explore the tender truism Charles Simic once wrote in an inscription to Mark Strand, that “the dream of every honest cliché is to enter a great poem.” Indeed, poem after great poem, Newman, author of over 70 books of poetry, prose, and children’s literature, realizes in Lovely this dream of many honest clichés. The biggest and brightest…
Launch party pix on Flickr
The Way We Worked, In Three Acts by Jamie Wagman I. Long Ago My grandmother worked in kitchens, professional and home, pouring coffee and working a register, working from recipes and working from memory. Her hands were smooth velvet, her eyes deep brown and expressive. She whistled while she worked, driving her butcher husband and two grown children mad. I loved the sound; I was her taste tester, her fan club president, her rapt audience. How had she mothered? I imagine crossly, sometimes with rules and sometimes with rewards. If she gave her dog an ice cream cone for…
Threads of Connection by Nancy Gerber My grandmother was an artist with needle and thread. By the time I was born, she had retired as a seamstress who took in sewing to help my grandfather, a tailor, make ends meet. She raised three children during the Great Depression, when food, clothing, money, everything, was scarce. During my childhood, I’d spend long weekends with her a few times each summer, and, during those visits she taught me how to embroider. The linen tablecloths she embroidered with silk floss were things of beauty. They were bordered in a cross stitch that…
The Art of Making Hard Work Look Easy, or Simply Paid in Gratitude by Edward D. Currelley My mother Annie used to get up long before the crack of dawn; first things first, her coffee. The essential part of getting her day started. She would turn on the gas stove, light a match, it was like magic. That old aluminum percolator set the night before was ready to go. The smell of Maxwell House coffee filled the air. I remember stirring in my sleep, subconsciously thinking not now, just a few minutes more. There were five of us living at…
For Immediate Release: MOM EGG REVIEW WRITERS TO READ ABOUT MOTHERS’ WORK (AND PLAY) AT POETS HOUSE JUNE 2 Mom Egg Review celebrates MER 16, themed MOTHERS WORK/MOTHERS PLAY, with a reading by contributors at Poets House, 11 River Terrace, NYC 10282 on Saturday June 2, from 3-5 p.m. New York, New York: Poets and writers from across the country will read short pieces of fiction, poetry, and prose from the latest issue of Mom Egg Review at Poets House on Saturday June 2 from 3-5 p.m. The reading celebrates the launch of Mom Egg Review Vol. 16 themed MOTHERS…
May, 2018 Art by Ching Ching Cheng, poetry by Jennifer Stewart Fueston M.A.M.A. (Mothers Are Making Art) is a collaboration among ProCreate Project, The Museum of Motherhood, and Mom Egg Review. Art by Ching Ching Cheng Letting go series and Build series (please click the link for more art) Jennifer Stewart Fueston Taking the Baby to See Rothko at the National Gallery Fifteen minutes before closing seems like more time than we’ll need to see all there is to see of Rothko’s blocks of color, the hungry purples smeared on canvases, the primal reds. The baby likes the moving walkway, mobiles,…