Review by Mindy Kronenberg – One of the things that is delightfully deceptive about L.B. Williams’s chapbook, The Eighth Phrase, is how it plays with appearances: urban landscapes, family gatherings, the crouched hiding places of youth and the immense and unforgiving territory of memory. Another is the diminutive format of these sixteen poems, mostly titled and all numbered, tucked into a square booklet with a bright cover and curious illustration that itself defies easy explanation (a glowing chandelier hanging from a tree with a ghost-like house and graveyard subtly dotting the horizon) and is called “Homes for the Displaced.” It…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Grace Gardiner – The fairy tale has long served a dual purpose for the human imagination: one of warning, one of protection. The telling or reading of such stories alert us to the world’s continual balancing of will and behavior, manifested in the classic pairings of good vs. evil, light vs. shadow, right vs. wrong. These stories also save us, even spoil us, by exposing the successes and consequences of such stark dichotomies: they are words, images, plots, and characters through which we learn without burning ourselves. But what happens when this apotropaic magic is considered in…
Review by Lara Lillibridge – There is no better time for flash fiction than the summer. In between corralling children to sporting events, the beach, and various summer destinations, flash or micro fiction gives a respite, like a lick of ice cream. It is easier to deal with repetitive, “Mama, look at me!” requests when one is still pondering the after-glow of a good story, and each piece’s short duration (1-9 pages each) allows Know the Mother to slide easily into a busy schedule. Desiree Cooper, a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and community activist, casts a spell…
Review by Marcene Gandolfo – Whether read as a memoir in verse or a collection of poetry, A. M. O’Malley’s Expecting Something Else is a hybrid text that resists categorization. The collection of short prose poems reads as a nonlinear succession of short scenes that comprises one young woman’s coming of age. But as the title suggests, this may not be the coming-of-age story you expect. Born to a mother who encounters a long struggle with substance abuse, problematic men, and abject poverty, the narrator has lived a youth littered with neglect and abuse. Ultimately, the young speaker accompanies her…
Review by Ivy Rutledge – Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is a refreshing voice in the realm of parenting books and spiritual autobiography. Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting blends memoir, theology, and humor in a way that will leave you with an enriched outlook on your life with children of any age. As the mother of two young sons, Ruttenberg experiences the full range of chaos and joy that they offer her. She skillfully weaves discussions of theology through her descriptions of daily life, showing readers how her Jewish…
Review by Michelle Wilbert – As I completed Atoosa Grey’s organically lush Black Hollyhock, I thought immediately of the nearly platonic ideal evoked by Mary Oliver in “Sometimes”: “Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.” In Grey’s fine work, we are led through a robust yet gentle walk through the quotidian mysteries—the sacred and sublime that are always infused within the mundane by anyone willing to see and respond to them and then willing to allow into consciousness. Of course, to do that well, one must admit to “astonishment,” and Grey nimbly…
Review by Judith Swan – When the 19th century’s Anna Laetitia Barbauld addressed the less-than-classical theme of motherhood, the terms “sentiment” and “romanticized” were not the pejoratives they are today. Indeed, the cultivation of sentiment or emotion was a middle class virtue. For Barbauld to sing her love for her children was quintessentially poetic. But what Barbauld could write to an anticipated child For thee the nurse prepares her lulling songs, The eager matrons count the lingering day; But far the most thy anxious parent longs On thy soft cheek a mother’s kiss to lay. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43617) we today cannot—even with a…
Mom Egg Review Vol. 14 “Change” – Welcome to Mom Egg Review Vol. 14! This issue explores “Change.” Change can be a lightning bolt, a bud’s unfurling, or the inexorable melt of ice caps. A body swells with pregnancy, bends with illness, shrinks with age; a couple evolves or severs; a child slowly cycles through a myriad of incarnations. Or tornado, bomb, gunshot. Change is acute and cyclical, rhythmic and cataclysmic, personal and political, abstract and physical, natural and un-, absolute and incremental, often too gradual or too precipitous. Change is not just one-directional flow, something that happens to us;…
Tsaurah Litzky Artist’s Statement – I’m a widely published poet who also writes fiction, memoir, erotica, plays and commentary. Four years ago when an injury kept me indoors for the winter I started making collages. I consider each collage a poem. They have been exhibited in group shows at the Jackie Lima Gallery in Easton Pennsylvania, and Gallery Gaia in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn. In April 2014, I had my first solo show at Gallery Gaia and a second show is scheduled for Spring 2016. The forthcoming Outlaw Bible of American Art will contain a selection of my collages. Contact [email protected].
Nadia Colburn THE PHYSICAL WORLD For nine months I anticipated, as the other end of pain, a revelation: a world turned inside out. Each inch I grew marked a promise: my present physical certainty, my approaching release. And, indeed, torn open, I gave birth to the end of ideas. Beyond pain was born no understanding, beyond understanding was revealed no new knowing but another body, robust, which no thought set screaming, purple faced, infuriated at air, and no thought moved closer to my breast, and no thought closed its thinly lidded round brown eyes, so soon worn out by…