Author: Mom Egg Review

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…

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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,…

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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…

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Book Note by Jim Elledge – Using Hurricane Sandy as the backdrop and nominal reason for writing Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination, May Joseph investigates how vulnerable—and dependent—New York and New Yorkers are to ecology. Although most of us think of “ecology” as rural (forests and jungles, grasslands and plains), Joseph points out that large urban centers like New York, Bangalore, Beijing, and Dar es Salaam also have “ecologies,” which are as close to nature in their own way as small towns and villages in the American Midwest are. As important, she explains that New York…

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Review by Jennifer Jean  – “Why does it look like that?” my seven year old Chloe asked a few weeks ago, pointing to my bare breast as I tried to squeeze into an outworn swimsuit.  I liked her question. “It’s a poet’s question!” I thought, with outsized pride.  But what I explained then is how, as an infant, she used to grab and kneed the bulbous flesh as she put the milky tip into her mouth. I told her that I was giving her love when I was giving her milk. That my substance, which is love, is expressed through my…

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Review by Nancy Vona – Felice Aull’s The Music Behind Me is a fine book of poetry. Aull’s poems are satisfying to read. I enjoyed the poems on an emotional level, but I was also challenged to be a better poet, to think more carefully about my choice of line breaks, and to consider how to make the ordinary astonishing and unique. The poems in this volume, like all good poems, illuminate the senses—especially the sense of hearing. The Music Behind Me is a book about sound–the sounds of wind, city sounds, “word songs” uttered in prison, and in particular…

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So Mom, if you come there are rules: no talking about grandpa’s big C or making up your wacky stories. When you pack Christopher’s school lunch, don’t make peanut butter sandwiches, one of his friends might die, and no chocolate. He can have beef, but only grass-fed. True—he doesn’t eat much besides mac and cheese, so don’t try to force feed him broccoli or Brussels sprouts, none of those cruciferous vegetables. And if he gets his facts wrong, don’t correct him, he’ll throw a tantrum. Some dinosaurs are still alive, they’re called birds, and there are dragons, aka Komodo. And…

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Review by Katie Baker  – Coffee shops are considered diverse gathering places, establishments where all walks of life, both young and old, come to read, write, congregate and socialize- and most importantly, get their coffee fix. However, one forgets the importance of the ritual cup when they begin to read Ellaraine Lockie’s chapbook, Coffee House Confessions. The chapbook features poems written in and about coffee houses around the world, from the infamous Starbucks chain to more intimate settings in exotic locations in Italy and Portugal. Each poem is truly observant and one feels the depths of each character, no matter…

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Review by Teresa Schartel Narey – In her debut poetry collection, Instructions for Preparing Your Skin, Ariana Nadia Nash unabashedly reveals how deeply personal experiences forever mark our bodies. The poems are honest and courageous; Nash makes wounds feel like badges of courage. Instructions for Preparing Your Skin was selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of the 2011 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. The book is divided into five sections, across which Nash takes the reader on interstate and international journeys in the quest for love, home, and, of course, the protection that comes from feeling comfortable in one’s…

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Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader – In the twenty stories of Heather Tosteson’s Germs of Truth no one is left out. All told from a first-person viewpoint, they are populated with adopted children, reluctant mothers, lesbian couples, blended families, resentful sons and more. ‘More’ is also the title of the story ending the first section, which revolves around characters whose lives are touched in every way imaginable by their connections to sperm banks—not only the donors, the donees, their families and the children, but the workers as well. Most of the stories of the first section are rather short, though…

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