Review by Nancy Vona – I experienced a serious case of writer envy after reading Rosaly DeMaios Roffman’s latest book of poetry. Many of the poems evoked an exclamation of “that’s how I feel—I wish I’d written that!” Roffman has a beautiful, strong voice that transforms ordinary events in wise, elegiac utterances. The author of several books of poetry, Roffman taught creative writing, myth and literature and founded a Center for the Study of Myth and Folklore at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her poems have been translated into Slovak, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese, and she has contributed text or poems…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Jennifer Jean – I love dark chocolate. The higher the percentage of bitter to sweet the better for me. No surprise then that I found myself gnashing on Nicelle Davis’ bitter-intensive poetry in Circe, her recent collection out by Lowbrow Press. When reading these impressionistic lyrics I had no need for the original Homeric tale that serves as primary source for Davis’ mythos. The charms of this book—the strength of Circe’s voice, her sharp world, and her fatal whirlpool emotions—hold fast: “Sorrow/ can be delicious” says Circe, “…the sea is full of ceaseless want needing to be paid…
Review by Wendy Babiak Not Stung – I have read a lot of bad poetry. Between having moderated a poem-sharing site and now judging a monthly online contest, I’ve read more than my share. I know bad poetry. And I dread it. And let’s face it: these days there’s less guarantee than ever that because something has made it into book form it must be at least passably good. So when I’m given a book to review, it’s not received without at least a modicum of trepidation. The artful cover of Barbara Rockman’s debut, Sting and Nest, put that fear…
Review by Lynne Shapiro – Once I got past my initial fear that The Archivist’s subject matter and language was too remote for my taste, I found I had misjudged the book entirely. I couldn’t put it down and read it cover to cover in a single sitting. And read it again. Jean creates a highly satisfying and complex story about family, youth, desire and love, told with beginnings and begat-ings that is at once ancient and modern. These poems get better and better with subsequent reading as we recognize how deft, precise and musical is the language that creates…
A pen in hand works like bloodletting. Something in the gut. It’s the Voice of all voices asking to reign and leave my body behind, but I need more time. I trust other people when I want to believe they’re like me when I’m small in thought, shrinking to make room for their needs. The sweeper arrives and tells me to clean, hands me a broom. I sweep and find that God is here with knees to kneel and hands to pray, but God is made of rivulets, winding every way. Secrets are insoluble. They litter a shore called Plastic…
Our body is our beloved, and our destiny is found in our dreams: “Where are you?” asked Marjorie. “On a boat off the coast of The Big Island of Hawaii,” I answered as a dozen dolphins took flight into the air on both sides of the tourist boat. “What are you doing there?” “I came to meet Marion Woodman. I’m studying with her for the week and wanted to give her a copy of my script Beginner at Life. It was inspired by her writing.” “Who?” “She’s a famous Jungian analyst, and author of Addiction to Perfection. She’s worked with…
The Mom Egg – 2012 Reviewed by Tanya Angell Allen In New Pages http://www.newpages.com/item/4908-the-mom-egg-2012-06 “Before reading The Mom Egg, one might question why, if thousands of successful contemporary writers are also mothers, do we need an annual literary publication which “publishes work by mothers about everything, and by everyone about mothers and motherhood.” The first answer is that Editor Marjorie Tesser compiles a magazine that’s both as good as any middle-range literary magazine on the market and better than many anthologies. Sure, it’s inspiring to see the good work of so many mothers gathered together, but it’s inspiring to read…
Review by Virginia Bell In Eve Packer’s most recent book of poems, New Nails, the speaker delights in the notion that “people are strange when you’re a stranger.” She interviews, chats up, and eavesdrops on strangers she encounters everywhere, from the subway, corner bars, locker rooms, and steam baths, to 42nd Street, porno stores, lingerie shops, peep shows, and, as the title suggests, nail salons. Through these often intimate—and always revealing—exchanges with strangers, she re-shapes our perceptions of gender, the urban landscape, global formations, and even events that defy representation (the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11). In the title poem,…
Review by Katrinka Moore – To read Holly Anderson’s The Night She Slept with a Bear is to plunge into a beautiful and harsh world, fully lived in. These interwoven poems weave chaos into a coherence that you sense rather than analyze. While each story, each fragment, draws you in, it’s the way the parts mesh with the visual design and the music that makes reading Bear an experience worth delving into. A line from “Sheherezade v. 2,” describing another book, could apply to this one: “It almost looks like the little stories are chasing the idea of a narrative…
Review by Moira Richards – The scent of summer clings to dampened soil; we long to turn it under, let the living nestle down beneath the leaf mulch, as we, inside our houses, turn on lamps against November, wait again for spring. And so ends the last poem in this collection – a collection of poems about a family and about love; a collection of love poems for family members present, and family members alive only inside warm houses of memory. In The Lives We Live in Houses, Pauletta Hansel burrows beneath the leaf mulch of daily life and draws…