Poetry Comics by Jessy Randall – “The Topology of Motherhood” The diagrams (without added text) originally appeared in: Roger Fenn, ed. Topology of Low-Dimensional Manifolds: Proceedings of the Second Sussex Conference, 1977. Berlin, 1979. Jessy Randall’s motherhood-related poems and poetry comics have appeared in previous issues of The Mom Egg and also in Mama Liberada, Mamazine, Motherwords, and Brain, Child. Her most recent book is Injecting Dreams into Cows (Red Hen, 2012). She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/
Author: Mom Egg Review
Reader’s Note by Gail Denham – It took me a powerful long time to go through Lockward’s wonderful book, “The Crafty Poet”… mostly because I had to stop and try many of the exercises. Diane Lockward, who is the author of three poetry collections, including “Temptation by Water”, “What Feeds Us” and “Eve’s Red Dress,” and two chapbooks, has an impressive publication history. Lockward gathered 56 of the nation’s finest poets, some former state poets laureate, instructors, and other well published poets. Diane Lockward wrote challenging prompts, using model poems from the well-known poets to illustrate. Some of the tips…
Review by Issa M. Lewis – The idea of what a mother should be is often romanticized in popular thought. Images of the perfect mother—ultra-organized, fierce protectors of their children (but never taking it so far as to appear unfeminine)—have been slathered over primetime television since its inception. However, Lisa Marie Brodsky shows us in Motherlung that mothers can also be fragile, scarred, and struggling. This dichotomy both strains and strengthens the mother/daughter relationship Brodsky skillfully renders in her poems, ultimately leading the speaker out of grief and into her adult life as a stepmother. The tone of conflict is…
“Pryputniewicz does not flinch from the challenges of the labyrinth—pathways that might lead equally, or randomly, to betrayal or desire.”—Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogration of Strangers Author Tania Pryputniewicz on November Butterfly – Writing the poems of November Butterfly gave me the opportunity to celebrate both the power and the fragility of the female experience as a writer, mother, and survivor of rape during adolescence. Motherhood brought buried layers of shame and fear to the surface from that trauma, initiating my impulse to find ways to protect my children and beyond that, to find ways for us all to survive and…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg It may not be a coincidence that I have received Tsaurah Litzky’s poetry chapbook Jerry in the Bardo for review around the same time as Roz Chast’s graphic memoir of her aging parents, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, or that it arrived in my hands during the month of both my mother’s Yarzheit (anniversary of the death of a loved one, according to the Hebrew calendar) and my father’s 86th birthday. There is a particular poignancy at this time of year and, for those of us of a certain age, reflecting upon the experience…
Review by Tara L. Masih – Even before this young adult book was published as a novel, it won a merit award as a novella from the annual SCBWI’s Magazine Award competition. After publication, it garnered a long list of honors and recognition, most notably Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Book of the Year and a Skipping Stones Honor Award. Kamata, a versatile author who has published other award-winning books in other genres (including The Beautiful One Has Come, stories, and Losing Kei, a novel), often tackles those issues that many writers avoid: physical disabilities, racism, cultural identity. In Gadget…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg – The subject of motherhood can be tricky territory for women, in the literary as well as visual arts, where practitioners want their subject matter to transcend the personal realm and “precious” expectations that are sometimes aroused by cultural assumption. Over time we’ve seen this remarkable bond portrayed eloquently and skillfully in the paintings of Mary Cassatt, capturing the intimacy but also painterly brilliance of any great Impressionist, and in the poems of Sharon Olds and Fran Castan, whose work encompasses a complex dynamic of the self emerging and retreating in the lives of one’s children,…
When I finally sit down to write poetry at 9 p.m. in my “office” – which is my laptop sitting on my long wooden dining room table – I usually hear a drama-filled voice start calling, “Mama, mama, come quick! Ariel fell under my bed and I need her now!” or “I need to pee! It’s an emergency!” or “I need a lullaby!” That’s from my just-turned-5-year-old daughter Grace. Almost a year ago, I had a nine-weeks-premature baby, Zack, who’s sleeping in the room next to Grace and will most likely wake up and start bawling when he hears her…
Review by Julie Maloney – What moves me about Nancy Gerber’s latest work, Fire and Ice, is how she captures the bearings of the heart. Gerber combines poetry with prose in a seamless marriage of love and hurt. Read it once. Then read it again. The second reading will prove even more riveting than the first. From the beginning, she beckons us to her world of Fire and Ice with words by Robert Frost: “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” Structurally, the book is divided into two sections: Part One – My Mother’s Hand…
I set the trap tonight. Last week I wrote in my journal that life is sacred. Later, I bought the trap. Tonight I read to my child. Do animal mothers love their babies? Yes, yes, of course they do. Animal mothers love their babies, just like yours loves you. I kissed him goodnight. I came downstairs. Shakily I spread the peanut butter onto the trap. A minute ago I went outdoors. Two steps beyond the door, I stopped to breathe the cold air, to salute the moon and stars, so bright in a sky framed by the silhouettes of bare…