Review by Jennifer Martelli In her poem “Number Four,” Heather Sullivan writes I would hang there, pinioning wildly, clawing for ledge or outstretched root, something to help gain purchase . . . . Coming home from work your shadow joins them when they greet me at the front door. (1) Sullivan’s debut poetry collection, Waiting for an Answer, strikes that delicate balance between the past and the present, life and death. Whether lamenting a child never born while mourning her own mother or examining the scars of an absent, abusive father while maintaining a marriage that engenders safety, Sullivan masterfully…
Author: Mom Egg Review
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 24th edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA October, 2017 Art by Elisabeth Schön Words by Judy Swann Art by Elisabeth Schön The postpartum period is a surreal time and space that can hurt or heal a woman but either way she’ll never forget it with her in body in…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen The final poem in Margaret Rozga’s book of poems Pestiferous Questions titled “Why Jessie?” warns, “History is a timeline / Those who do not know history / leave it lying underfoot / We trip on it again and again” (117). These lines predict a pestiferous thorn in our collective side and Rozga extracts the sharp encumbrance, delicately placing it under a near-blinding magnifying glass. As individuals in a society that has always been multicultural (to the chagrin of white nationalists who have made their stubborn persistence violently and recently known), it seems, as readers, we…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett It becomes quickly apparent that Tina Kelley is quite at home as parent, journalist, and poet. Her themes are as familiar as family, thorny as politics, clever as language, and as varied as the many sources from which she draws inspiration. Her years reporting for the New York Times (where she shared in a Pulitzer for 9/11 coverage) honed her taste for delving into the heart of things, directly and deeply. That she has also won awards for her poetry is not surprising. Her observations of everything from the daily to the spiritual weave…
Review by Christine Salvatore Astrobolism: The result of being struck by a star. The blasting of plants by the sun in high summer. From the Greek astron, and bolis, or missile. So begins Caroline Crumpacker’s debut book of poems, Astrobolism. I was unfamiliar with the meaning of the title, but on the copyright page the definition is printed. And the poems that follow redefine many aspects of this world, blurring the lines between the political and the personal. The opening poem, “Afternoon of the Public Body,” brings us into a dinner scene where the speaker picks apart the…
Review by Issa M. Lewis Any creative writing teacher will tell you that conflict is at the heart of fiction; stories require dissonance, tension, to capture our attention and help us connect with the characters. Alex Behr’s Planet Grim doubles down on that well-worn tenet with stories that illustrate the convolution of human nature. Behr’s characters feel every twist of their lives as a sucker punch. For example, in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” the speaker is a husband and father of an adopted infant son. While he feels overwhelming love for his child, he is conflicted about…
Writing Menopause: An Anthology of Fiction, Poetry and Creative Nonfiction Jane Cawthorne and E.D.Morin (Eds.) Review by Bunny Goodjohn [W]hen a woman ceases the fretful struggle to be beautiful…[s]he can at last transcend the body…and be set free from [people’s] expectations and her own capitulation to them” (Greer 175). Some years ago, I took Germaine Greer’s The Change to a conference. After long days of lectures, I read this seminal work on menopause in bed. I knew one day soon I would need to navigate that landscape and I trusted Greer to guide me. I wish Writing Menopause…
September 15, 2017 POETRY: Challenging the Quintessential Motherhood Poem A folio curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Motherhood poems have a certain reputation of being overly sentimental and happy. Traditionally, they have not reflected the fact that the motherhood experience is highly complex involving identity, body image, autonomy, and more…. Featured poets: Maggie Smith, Kelli Russell Agodon, Karen Skolfield, Stephanie Bryant Anderson, Erika Meitner, Sarah Browning, Teri Cross Davis, JP Howard GALLERY: Mother Bunting: The Art of Sarah Dixon and other Mother Artists Curated by Ana Silva Bunting, that repeating triangle flag of cheeriness that decorates birthday parties and festivities,…
A folio curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Motherhood poems have a certain reputation of being overly sentimental and happy. Traditionally, they have not reflected the fact that the motherhood experience is highly complex, involving identity, body image, autonomy, and more. Jennifer Militello’s excellent article, “From the Maternal to the Mechanical” (APR May/June 2017), explores the “struggle against sentiment in contemporary American motherhood poetry.” The premise is that “America’s contemporary poets are now in a position where they must explore ways of writing about motherhood that can defy sentimentality and resist the cultural pressure to present motherhood mainly…