I’m having the biggest ego trip in my life. Lucas, at one-and-a-half years old, sees me everywhere. He notices a woman in a magazine ad and squeals, “Mommy!” Same squeal with the woman on the back of the Cheerios box, the female firefighter in his picture book, and the image of a mermaid in the Starbucks logo, Mommy. (Okay, maybe that last one has more to do with the frequency with which Mommy visits Starbucks.) Every woman depicted, regardless of ethnicity, age, or any remote likeness to me, is Mommy to him. His squeals are embedded with such toddler joy…
Author: Mom Egg Review
– I was at the shoe store the other day and a father said the most refreshing thing to his five-year-old son. “You look like a pimp in those red shoes.” The child didn’t say, “What’s a pimp, Daddy?” But even if he had, that would have been okay. Why do parents lose half their vocabulary and their sense of humor when they have young children? Surely a five year old doesn’t get that pimp joke, but he does get that his father is funny and quirky. It’s sad to listen to parents dumb down their talk. They refrain from…
It’s quiet. Really quiet. My son is at my ex-husband’s place for the week. The constant outer noise and inner static of an intimate relationship that is now over is gone. Most efforts at reaching out to build business interests beyond what was already emerging stopped around six months ago so all my energy could go toward finishing the Eden trilogy. And now, the silent prayer of the last fifteen years has been fulfilled. My life is very quiet. Not only is my outer life very quiet, my inner life, my mental life is much quieter. I was shook three…
Twenty years ago, there was only one reason I coveted turning forty. ONE. As a hungry student, on the scent of the Shechina (immanent presence of the divine), the esoteric, and the mysterious, I discovered that the rabbis forbid anyone to learn Kabbalah before the age of forty. Suddenly forty became to me like sixteen to a young adolescent yearning to drive a car: The age of unencumbered freedom. The age that the doors of universal wisdom flew open and the full buffet is there for the taking. Forty became the age of permission. Of course, there would first be…
As I began to inch closer to forty, I was stunned to realize that for all my efforts of the last twenty years–working day and night literally through day-dreams and night dreams trying to tear down what was non-essential to my soul and build up what was, my big dream of having a real home, a stable home, had still eluded me. Over the years, I had invited a stream of goddesses, archetypes, artists, and imaginary friends into my private cauldron of destruction and creation to assist me with the art of letting go of what is dead and opening…
I moved from New York City to a northern suburb in the ninth month of my first pregnancy. The initial deluge of visitors eager to see the new house and the new baby subsided to a trickle; I was alone with this little alien, whom I loved more fiercely and tenderly than I would have thought possible, but who was a little dictator, mewling and calling whenever my attention was diverted for more than a moment. The nearest town was a mile’s walk all uphill; my driving skills were rudimentary. I felt like a rowboat tied to shore with a…
Interview by May Joseph On November 7, 2006, as she was writing her book Quickly Changing River, Meena Alexander was interviewed by May Joseph in New York City. J: Meena, I’d like you to talk about writing childhood. A: Ah, writing childhood. Well, where to start? I have a poem I wrote a long time ago in a volume called Stone Roots. The poem is called Childhood, and there are lines that run: Quite early as a child I understood flesh was not stone… Childhood for me really is the ground of much of what I write. Privileged territory.…
Marie Ponsot discusses her poetry book, Easy, motherhood, hiphop, and of course, poetry. Interview by Marjorie Tesser 2009. Marie Ponsot Easy from Marjorie Tesser on Vimeo. On writing and mothering: Marie Ponsot Advice from Marjorie Tesser on Vimeo. Marie Ponsot reads her poem, “Winter.” Marie Ponsot reads “Winter” from Marjorie Tesser on Vimeo. Marie Ponsot’s most recent books include The Bird Catcher, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry in 1998, and Springing: New and Selected Poems. Professor emerita of English at Queens College, CUNY, she now teaches at the Unterberg Poetry Center of…
– As every mother considering What To Name the Baby knows, names matter. They resonate, they project, they herald, they evoke. They are subject to personal and societal associations: I could no easier have named my child Eugene, because of the freckled brat in my fourth-grade class, than Adolf or Idi. The summer I was fourteen, I’d insisted that everyone call me Mia; when they complied, I felt myself infinitely more ethereal than prosaic Marjorie. For us as writers, words are inherently important. They are our palette and our currency, the way we frame and define and color the world.…
Anne Waldman Interview from Marjorie Tesser on Vimeo. A Conversation with Anne Waldman on gender and writing; her epic Iovis project; collaborations with other artists; Manatee/Humanity and more. With Marjorie Tesser Bowery Poetry Club Nov. 2008 Anne Waldman – poet, professor, performer, and cultural activist is the author of over 40 books and small press editions of poetry and poetics, including most recently Manatee/Humanity and the anthology Beats at Naropa, co-edited with Laura Wright. Other titles includeFast Speaking Woman, IOVIS (I&II), Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews and Manifestos, Marriage: A Sentence, In the Room of Never Grieve, Structure of the…