Review by Marcene Gandolfo – In Sunday school, when we chose roles for the Easter play, no one wanted to play Judas. Understandably so. Judas Iscariot was the traitor, the villain. Who would want to be Judas? Then we realized, if no one played Judas, there would be no play. Judas character – however despised – was an integral part of our story. Without Judas kiss, there would be no Easter. I began to feel sympathy for this man, who was left in the end, hanging from a tree, detested for centuries. Years later, my interest resurfaced when I read…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Christina Mock – Tara Masih’s The Chalk Circle is a superb collection of essays that moves the reader outside of their comfort zone. These award winning writers cover a wide range of topics which raise questions about war, violence, forgiveness, racism, love, innocence, and ultimately, what it means to be human. While reading this collection, I could not help but become attached to the characters I met whether it was Shanti Elke Bannwart, in search of peace for her father’s crimes as a Nazi or Samuel Autman, the only African American man working on a newspaper in Utah…
Review by Ivy Rutledge – Nina Schuyler’s novel, The Translator, will pull you along Hanne Schubert’s journey through the shifting landscapes of her life, both literal and figurative. From her apartment in San Francisco across the ocean to Japan and beyond, she seeks the answers to important questions. Questions she only discovers after months of searching: “What happens when the soul is assigned its purpose, but is neglected? Forgotten? Or worse, thwarted? When someone or something comes along and tells the soul that its reason for being here is not wanted?” Hanne’s story opens with a love affair with a…
Review by Libby Maxey – I expected to graze on Nicole Callihan’s Superloop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014), but I ended up devouring it —or, to make use of the titular metaphor, I went to Callihan’s classy midway and didn’t want to leave. This collection has a quirky gravitas that commands attention, and Callihan’s poems are just different enough, one to another—stylistically and thematically—to keep the reader wondering what kind of ride comes next. Sometimes, the poems are a giddy, rushing experience; sometimes, they carry the reader away gently, such that she might not realize it until the bottom drops out…
Review by Judy Swann – The first recorded poetry I ever heard the Joan Baez Baptism album; and in the many years since, drunk with verse and swaddled in vocals, I had yet to hear another. Then I came across Eve Packer and Stephanie Stone’s My Champagne Waltz. Both are perfect, but the only thing they have in common is their commitment to the trip. Throw out your shoon, put on your pork-pie hat and grab your stilettos! Eve Packer’s poetry is not slam, but that sassy – no contemplative James Emanuel – but a big city block Jezebel, writing…
Review by Maura Candela – Katrinka Moore’s third book of poetry, Numa, published by Aqueduct Press, is a departure from her first two books, and like nothing else you’ve read. An epic poem about a shape-shifting creature, Numa tells a fast-paced story, even as it proves a meditation on consciousness, on the primal nature of motherhood, and on how the body shapes identity. However you imagine her, asleep she folds in on herself fawn-like, puma tail curled to her chin. This is how we first meet Numa, a young numen, a Roman word for a forest spirit. It is telling…
Dear Kindergarten Teacher, I am going out of town this week. My husband and Henry are coming with me because Henry is still nursing and can’t be away from me for more than twelve hours or else my milk will dry up and then he’ll be forced to drink water all the time because he won’t take a bottle. We’re staying in a hotel with a monstrous bed, one with heaven stuffed between the sheets and twenty pillows to support every limb, enough bed for the two of us to twist around in and then sleep like no one else…
You came when a woman is usually past the messiness of a child with all its evolutionary prized self-centeredness and demand. You came and introduced fear into a life If not well lived, lived with adventure, risk; attempted without regret. You brilliantly exposed remorse for time squandered in search of tangible achievement and the wait for rightness – Right partner, right career, right security, right place. Time expired. Then, later, you presented bringing a second vicarious chance. Ambivalence when you were a thought, But the instant you slipped fast after 72 hours from your first knock, (Portent of nature revealed…
Review by Nancy Gerber – When I opened Me First, a collection of poems by Ann Curran, I found two pages of “testimonials” from historically important artists, writers, industrialists, and even Jesus Christ, who has this to say: “Don’t blame me. I just gave her the talent. Never told her what to do with it. However, I’m glad I made the cut.” And this from James Joyce: “I think Me First could have been a little more obscure . . . . But sometimes it made me LOL.” The commentary left me laughing and also a little confused: what kind…
Review by Lisa Cheby – Good poetry, like a good sermon, finds a balance between wisdom and humility, between insight and struggle, to bring the painful into the light so we can see its beauty. Iris Jamahl Dunkle is not afraid of getting dirty; not kinky dirty, but a kind of digging in the garden dirty, of excavating our emotional skeletons and roots dirty: “Dig and dig until all the bones are found” (70). In her Trio Award Winning book Gold Passage, Dunkle serves up the roots and bones negotiating how to be human in organic forms that leave her…