Review by Sarah W. Bartlett We Became Summer reads like a coming-of-age memoir of a young woman finding herself through time, travel, loss and reflection. This is Barone’s first full-length poetry collection since having two chapbooks published, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing, 2008), as well as individual poems in numerous anthologies and literary journals. Before reading this new collection, I was drawn in by three things: the title; the cover’s time-travel collage; and the section headings (Heat, Light, Sounds, Home, Breeze). Who would not be curious to know more, to follow…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Carole Mertz Nancy Gerber is the author of A Way Out of Nowhere, an elegant collection of nine worthy stories. She earned a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University and a M.A. in Psychoanalysis from the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis-NJ. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Mom Egg Review, Adanna, and elsewhere. Gerber writes about relationships among teenagers and young adults, and relationships between teens and their parents, especially between daughters and mothers. She writes with authority, both with regard to her subject matter and with reference to her writing skill. While many…
Review by Elaine Terranova “Little wing or fin,” says the headnote defining aileron, the hinged part of the wing in a fixed wing aircraft. The title poem serves as a preface. It explores means of transport, beginning with this mysterious image, “Once I rode a one-eyed horse/ to a tree house in the forest.” (7) In a book of poems the right symbol informs the poems but likewise, as in Aileron, the poems give tone and weight to the symbol. The narrator identifies with the aileron as she herself becomes part of time and movement and the continuation of…
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 32nd edition of this collaboration in which 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 Art: Sophia Marinkov Jones The works are from a series that reflect different moments in a day as a mother and child interact. These…
Review by Anna Schoenbach Swap/Meet is a series of nine short flash fictions in the style of a classified ad or online notice of sale that reveal the intricate stories behind mundane, everyday items. Susan Rukeyser, author of Not On Fire, Only Dying (Twisted Road Publications; finalist for the 2016 Lascaux Fiction Prize) has brought those stories to life. The objects for sale are given meaning because a memory is attached to them. A pair of baby shoes, a horse-themed sculpture, a book collection, and a resized pink prom dress – each one becomes a rich and vibrant portrait…
An Archival Mothering We’re On: A June Jordan Reader, Christoph Keller and Jan Heller Levi, Eds. Review by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz For this memoriam, Jordan’s ode begins immediately. At first glance the cover is simply black and white, but a closer look reveals the art of a soft grey woven whisper of a (maternal) quilt or distant fence, fraught with possibility. This webbed image set to full bleed, anchored by a black band, is how one enters. Whereas in most books the front matter of praise and accolades, copyright, partial list of works, and embedded quotes may be overlooked, for…
Review by Christine Salvatore A good story can thread its way into our lives and not release us until it is told. So it is with the prominent narrative behind Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s newest book, Interrupted Geographies (Trio House Press, 2017). This is Dunkle’s third poetry collection, following Gold Passage, selected by Ross Gay for the 2012 Trio Award, and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air, and as well as two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press. The bones of Dunkle’s collection are made of stone. Broken into three sections, each is distinct for its subject matter but linked…
Review by Michelle Everett Wilbert Carol Smallwood’s latest volume of poetry, A Matter of Selection, brings into sharp focus her vivid interest in both the natural world and probing observations of the daily—the quotidian mysteries present in any given life when we take time to notice and reflect upon all that we interact with in the course of a day. Ms. Smallwood—a retired librarian and the author of several novels, poetry, children’s books and educational materials for librarians and educators—brings the eye of a scientist, the heart of a mother, and the mind of a mystic to her poems, infusing…
MER VOX Quarterly – Summer 2018 On Mothering Grown Children – A fiction, poetry, and prose folio curated by Peg Alford Pursell Featured writers: Maria Benet Jacqueline Doyle Rebecca Foust Linda Michel-Cassidy Stephanie Noble Daye Phillippo Dorothy Rice Angela Narciso Torres Peg Alford Pursell Obsession/Addiction – A poetry folio curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Featured poets: Devon Balwit Karen Rile Rachel Barton Sonia Greenfield Jenna Le Theresa Senato Edwards Write Now: Mothers Reflect on the Joys and Challenge of Motherhood – A folio curated by JP Howard Featured writers: Anastacia-Reneé J. Nicole Hill Shawn(ta) Smit-Cruz Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie…
On Mothering Grown Children INTRODUCTION The impetus for creating this folio arose when, by chance, I read an entry I’d made long ago in a journal soon after the birth of my daughter. I hadn’t planned to have a child at age nineteen and I hadn’t planned on the caesarean section by which she made her entry into the world. Over the years during which she grew into adulthood, I made many plans for my child, some of which worked out and just as many that didn’t. I hadn’t planned on reading the journal entry. I’d been…