The Mom Egg Vol.9 2011 Paper, 120 pages. $18 Margo Berdeshevsky’s photo essay excerpt “In the Shadows of Motherhood” frames poems and stories in varying light, bright to dark. Contributors include Olga Abella , Cheryl Boyce-Taylor , MRB Chelko , Floyd Cheung, Fay Chiang, Nicelle Davis, Jennifer Edwards, Kelli Stevens Kane, Jan Heller Levi, Rachael Lynn Nevins, Jonathan Wells. Contributors Olga Abella Marci Ameluxen Robyn Art A.M. Baker Kelly Bargabos Margo Berdeshevsky Carol Berg Cheryl Boyce-Taylor Tammy Bradshaw Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser Rosalie Calabrese Sharon Campbell Carla Carlson Patricia Carragon Liane Kupferberg Carter Sarah Cavallaro MRB Chelko Floyd Cheung Fay Chiang Heather…
Author: Mom Egg Review
The Mom Egg Vol. 8 “Lessons” 2010 Paper, 136 pages. $18 From The Mom Egg, a theme issue, “Lessons”, some to live by, others best ignored. Trenchant, lyrical, savage, and funny, the issue includes work by Kimberly L. Becker, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, James Cihlar, Janlori Goldman, Veronica Liu, Tara Masih, Susan Tepper, Kirstin Hotelling Zona. TABLE OF CONTENTS Kimberly L. Becker – Language Class Marian Kaplun Shapiro – Bah Judith O’Brien – Ways To Say the World Katherine Swett – Acrobatic Alphabet Helen Ruggieri – A Gourmet’s Linguistic Analysis of Culture Joanne G. Yoshida – The North Wind, Poetry, and Pimentos…
The Mom Egg Vol. 7 – Tales of African, Caribbean, South and North American mothers. This issue contains work from iconoclastic visual artist Heide Hatry, Malaika King Albrecht, Elizabeth Aquino, Denise Emanuel Clemen, Tami Haaland, Mary Merriam, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie and more. The Mom Egg Vol. 7 2009 Paper, 124 pages. $18 Contributors Malaika King Albrecht Eileen Apperson Elizabeth Aquino Judith Arcana Michelle Augello-Page Robyn Beattie Orna Ben-Shoshan Kristina Bicher Jenn Blair Cheryl Boyce-Taylor Liz Brennan Estelle Bruno Sarah Cavallaro Sabra Ciancanelli Denise Emanuel Clemen Sarah Conover Kathy Curto Arfah Daud Nicelle Davis Wendy Levine DeVito Jennifer Edwards (Jen/ED)…
The Mom Egg Vol. 6 2008 Paper, 114 pp. Featured in this edition are prize-winning poet Sharon Dolin’s wry “To Worry, A Wallow,” “Marry Yourself,” by Joy Rose, lead singer of Housewives on Prozac, Caribbean-American poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor’s poignant “Nineteen Seventy Five,” and works by Radhlyah Ayobami, Corie Feiner, Glenis Redmond, and others. Contents Seven Continents Nine Lives (Excerpt) Fay Chiang Teeth Marks Cheryl Boyce-Taylor The Orange Picker’s Daughter Annette Daniels Taylor Mrs. Snow Annette Daniels Taylor Transylvania Ella Veres Maher Arar May Joseph If I Ain’t African Glenis Redmond Letters to Luzon Cristina Querrer They Lost My Vote…
The Mom Egg Vol. 5 2007 Paper, 101 pages. New mothers to grandmothers examine issues ranging from single motherhood, dating younger men, separation anxiety, the body, caring for older parents, the changing nuclear family, and sex. Featuring work by Alana Free, Nan Byrne, Tina deVaron, Annette Daniels Taylor, and others. Contents American Literacy MaryJo Martin Hey Adam Corie Feiner SUSU Nan Byrne Motherhood Nan Byrne The Leaving Game Meredith Fein Lichtenberg Lullaby Jill Shely School Days Golda Solomon The Candyman Radhiyah Ayobami 20 Radhiya Ayobami The Naked Girl Cassandra Neyenesch Breasts Joy Rose At Eleven and a Half Lee Schwartz…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett – Amy Dryansky’s newest poetry collection, Grass Whistle, was awarded the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. While writing this collection, Dryansky began a blog about the intersection of mother/artist/poet in her own and in other women’s lives. The blog establishes her mother/artist work as both important and interesting. The true gift of Grass Whistle is the proof that we can use whatever is at hand to make what we need. Every poem shines with transparent honesty about aspects of life and relationship we have been socialized to hide: “what I imagined spilled out, slopping/fake fairy dust over everyone/I couldn’t quite…
Review by RZ Wiggins – Mothers are simple, complex, opaque, vivid, loving, distant, devoted, and neglectful, all in a lifetime. From its first pages, this slim volume overflows with the above and with a mother’s abundant love and commitment. Rosalie Calebrese’s chapbook Remembering Chris is a memorial to a lost son. But the collection also shows the many sides to mothering through a voice that is at once surprisingly pragmatic and refreshingly honest. Aside from “Mixed Emotions” (3) which centers on mothering concerns (how many mothers haven’t felt these?), Remembering Chris’s poems ring with joy at both motherhood and grandmotherhood. Given the absence…
Review by Barbara Harroun – Samantha Duncan’s intimate, inventive, and gloriously imaginative chapbook-length poem The Birth Creatures examines and gives new eyes and voice to the post-partum experience. Duncan, the author of the chapbooks One Never Eats Four (ELJ Publications, 2014) and Moon Law (Wild Age Press, 2012), explained the genesis of The Birth Creatures in a Blogging the Numinous interview with Julianna DiMicco: The Birth Creatures came from a few places. I wanted to reclaim my own postpartum experience, which I felt had been downplayed and not taken very seriously by those around me. I also think not enough is said about how bizarre pregnancy and childbirth are, so I…
Review by Kerry Neville – Buffy the Vampire Slayer is deeply ingrained in both popular and academic culture (spin-offs, references, paraphernalia, and the academic journal Slayage). Josh Whedon, the series creator, has explained that he explicitly developed Buffy as a feminist revision of the horror genre, taking as its center Buffy’s fight against universal monsters: loneliness, awakening sexuality, social norms, and oppression. Indeed, Buffy, our complicated heroine, the Slayer, born once in a generation, is tasked with protecting herself from the ordinary challenges of high school and the extraordinary challenges of vampires and demons, and with saving the world. But what…
Review by Jennifer Martelli – From the opening title poem where we are told, “Never mind what your mother says” (3) to the closing poem “Chained Reaction” where Betts writes The top of my mother’s hand is tan shallot skinand her shelter a crosshatched clam, a sealed mouth hiding sealed hands (64-66) Genevieve Betts creates a seismic movement across a continent, a country, a body in her debut collection, An Unwalled City. The reader is in “this limbo” where “flows blood from the breasts that give suck” (“Isis” 14-16). In the thirty-eight poems that make up this collection, Betts births and unearths…