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…
Author: Mom Egg Review
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…
Arrival: An Interview of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor by Keisha-Gaye Anderson Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s Arrival is a much-anticipated poetry collection by the Trinidadian-born writer. Here, Cheryl is interviewed by Keisha-Gaye Anderson at the Five Myles Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, on June 14, 2017. Arrival is a love story between a mother and her daughter. The poems are road maps connecting one generation to another. The narrative begins in 1950 with a woman who is pregnant with twins. In her seventh month she delivers a stillborn boy, and a baby girl weighing less than two pounds. During this tumultuous period the father leaves…
Cheryl Boyce Taylor reads poems from her new book, Arrival, at the Five Myles Gallery in Brooklyn on June 14, 2017. Thanks to Five Myles Gallery and Donna Lee Weber for the video footage. Arrival is a love story between a mother and her daughter. The poems are road maps connecting one generation to another. The narrative begins in 1950 with a woman who is pregnant with twins. In her seventh month she delivers a still-born boy, and a baby girl weighing less than two pounds. During this tumultuous period the father leaves the family and has an affair.…
Review by Anton Nimblett What She Name? If your life were a poem, what form would it take? Which of us could claim the delicate and even couplet? Who the villanelle and who the quadrille? Would your life be a sonnet pretending order, only to turn shockingly on itself? Surely some lives insist on the brash swagger of spoken word. Arrival, Cheryl Boyce Taylor’s fourth collection of poems, presented in five sections, is very much an unveiling of her life. Boyce-Taylor’s intentionality in crafting the collection as memoir is evident. Her presentation of a rich life, fully-lived is well-served…