Review by Jennifer Martelli – In “Wreck Things,” Jennifer Jean writes: ….My first step on water was for balance– my arms arced, clutching after the folds of those notes. The second step, for fright, caught me fast– divided between two surfaces. This seemed wrong so I tiptoed following the paper’s flux for a few yards, scooping it up when the wind was lazy. Here we have the poet balancing on Pier 42 on the Pacific Ocean–about as far west on the continent as you could go without falling off–desperately trying to grasp an “incomprehensible/villanelle conception or a grocery list” let…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Ellen Miller-Mack – I may not be the best person to equate marriage to a sonnet, but I feel it nonetheless, in Amy Dryansky’s generous and lovely book, Grass Whistle. The speaker is rooted in a traditional family and a long marriage, with many references to children and a husband. This isn’t a volume of formal poems but Dryansky stays within the sonnet-like emotional structure of her persona as wife/mother/daughter. Within it she soars with the freedom afforded to accomplished poets. The speaker dutifully does what is prescribed by her traditional roles but the poems aren’t circumscribed. This…
Review by Emily R. Blumenfeld – Through 48 poems interlinked with photographic “image poems” and “documentations”, Amy Sara Carroll locates her experience of motherhood simultaneously in private and public space. Fannie + Freddie/The Sentimentality of Post-9/11 Pornography is infused with both maternal love and juxtapositions of the relational closeness of intimacy, sexualities, and parenting with the inequalities and exploitation in the social, political, and ecological landscapes that frame the privacy of family. Carroll consistently offers a lyric poetry of contemporary social reality told in an intimate personal voice. The text’s structure echoes a parallel process to the links between private…
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Author’s Note: Margie Shaheed on Mosaic – “These are the poems of a storyteller clearly connected to her African ancestry, oral tradition, and the history of Black people in America.” Dr. Mary E. Weems, Ohioana Quarterly, Summer/Fall 2013 Mosaic is a chapbook of storytelling poems. I learned the art of storytelling from my mother who was privately a poet. She told the best stories and she wrote poetry always careful with details and she had impeccable timing. I naturally bring this element into my work because I believe /we are poem with story to tell/. I see poetry as a…
Review by Sandra Ramos O’Briant – Published on the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the cover of Get Out of My Crotch is the Statue of Liberty with her legs spread and her bare feet in the stirrups of a gynecological exam table. Her expression is demure, a bit sad, and she’s holding a sheet of paper in front of her crotch saying that inside are 21 essays on the War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health. The book presents a range of viewpoints, but the writers are all in agreement that their reproductive rights are being challenged in…
Review by Tara Betts and Marjorie Tesser – Note: In Looking Up Harryette Mullen, Barbara Henning interviews Harryette Mullen by means of a correspondence. Poet Lee Ann Brown suggested that poet and educator Tara Betts and MER Editor Marjorie Tesser also correspond in reaction to the book. Dear Tara, When poet Lee Ann Brown suggested we collaborate on an epistolary review of Looking Up Harryette Mullen, I was excited about the idea. You are a poet and teacher, and I’m a poet and editor, but not an academic; I thought we’d possibly have different takes on the material. Looking…
Review by Suzanne Kamata – What a voice! With her dark sense of humor and her lively, inventive prose, Kirstin Scott, author of the award-winning Motherlunge, can make even the most mundane aspects of suburban life – recycling, for instance – totally compelling. At the heart of the narrative is Thea, a hopeful young woman raised by an unreliable mother, and her dazzling older sister, Pavia, who is pregnant. When Thea’s boyfriend decides to take a break from their relationship, and Pavia decides to leave her adoring new husband, Thea moves in with her sister to help out. But this…
Author’s Note: Nicelle Davis on Becoming Judas – It could be said that Becoming Judas is a book about teeth. Many of the poems incorporate mouth images, and these images are constantly devouring each other. I’ve always had a thing for teeth—I just didn’t know that I was baring this obsession in my work until friends started sending pictures of my book and their mouths closing around it, teeth close to the cover, the pages squeezed by their incisors. In Becoming Judas, I did what poets have done for centuries; I revealed my private obsession,…
MOM EGG Review and Half-Shell Press Present On the Half-Shell a new literary series Wild West Wild East Featured readers: Holly ANDERSON Nicelle DAVIS Kate GALE Kristin PREVALLET Marjorie TESSER Monday, September 16th at 6 PM (doors at 5:30) THE GALLERY at LPR 158 Bleecker St, NY NY 10012 212.505.3474 Admission $5 Contact: Marjorie Tesser [email protected] The debut reading of the On the Half-Shell literary reading series, “Wild West Wild East”, featuring innovative poets from both coasts, will take place on Monday, September 16th at 6 PM at The Gallery at LPR. Each of the poets featured in this…