Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Rebe Huntman has enjoyed a long career in dance, directing Danza Viva Center for World Dance, Art & Music out of Chicago, along with its residency dance company One World Dance Theater. Through her work in dance, she has traveled throughout Latin America, including Cuba. She is also an accomplished poet and essayist, and now she has a new book, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir in Magic & Miracle, a lyrical and beautiful story that explores death thirty years after her mother passes away. Huntman hopes to show that it’s never too late to…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Upcoming, new, and noted books (listed in order of date of publication). Geri Lipschultz, Grace Before the Fall, DarkWinter Press, August 2025, literary fiction (novel) Grace Before the Fall is a reminder that every girl has a little Joan of Arc in her wheelhouse. It is the time of the hostage crisis in Iran, and in New York City, it is long before the fall of the towers, just before AIDS has found itself a name, although young men are mysteriously dying, and Grace Rosinbloom is inheriting their furniture. In Geri Lipschultz’s virtual love…
In Loving Memory of Jennifer Martelli We send love to the family and friends of MER’s Poetry Co-Editor Jennifer Martelli on her passing. We are heartsick at this untimely loss. Jenn was a brilliant, unique poet, an astute editor, a brave and principled person, a gifted teacher, a loving family member and warm and dear friend. She was active in many poetry communities, including the Thursday Poets, Warren Wilson alumni, IAWA, local Salem and Massachusetts poet groups, and more. She participated in and co-ran several reading series. She was valiant in her fight against cancer, and in her political…
Aimee Suzara First Ultrasound of a Trickster What did you sound like, that first time? A flutter: the wings of a furious butterfly, thrum of a colibrí. Twice my heart’s speed, yours. A life-force undeniable. A wild new fish already swimming upstream, all swashbuckle and verve, all grit and ashé. Already my Santonilyo (1) playing in my waters: opening the way. (1) Santonilyo is the syncretized version of Santo Niño, a deity known to play in the waters and until current day, helps protect the people. The Santo Niño is seen as a significant figure in the Catholization…
Congratulations and good luck to our Best of the Net Nominees! MER Best of the Net 2026 Nominations Poetry Adrie Rose Ajanae Dawkins Jill Crammond Jennifer Garfield Maria Mazziotti Gillan Megan Merchant CNF Geula Geurtz Krista Lee Hanson Art Sarah Lightman
Jennifer Jean on Where do you live? and Mojdeh Bahar on Silence and Lost Words: A Conversation on Translation MER is pleased to present an interview with two authors on their recent books of poetry in translation: Jennifer Jean on Where do you live? and Mojdeh Bahar on Silence and Lost Words. Jean and Bahar then interviewed each other, leading to an intriguing and revealing conversation. Enjoy! JENNIFER JEAN ON WHERE DO YOU LIVE? Where Do You Live? is a bilingual, collaborative collection of questions and responses in Arabic and English, written and co-translated by Iraqi…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Marjorie Maddox, Seeing Things, Wildhouse Publishing, February 2025, poetry With its focus on memory, illness, and their ramifications, Seeing Things explores overlapping roles of a daughter whose mother is entering the beginning stages of dementia and of a mother whose daughter is struggling with depression. These poems also witness a woman juggling her own memories of abuse and survival who lives in a world unsettled by shifting boundaries of truth and fabrication. Ultimately, Seeing Things explores the ways that we distort or preserve memory, define or alter reality, see or disregard those around…
Review by Jiwon Choi In Slip, Nicole Callihan, author of chigger ridge, This Strange Garment, SuperLoop, The Couples, and many more titles, offers up poems that are in full force of their elegant and vivid language, poems that are gleefully punchy and cranky, poems that reveal just how much upheaval we must deal with in the day to day living of our lives. Upheaval which we, as the poet reminds us, bring upon ourselves and bring upon others. This is revealed right away in the book’s beginning poem, “Stick”. The stick in question, found “at the mouth of the…
& You Think It Ends poems by Amy Small-McKinney Review by Rebecca Jane & You Think It Ends opens wounds and exposes their lasting impact. Rape, gun violence, genocide, unsafe abortion, drug abuse, emotional abuse, bird extinction, and widowhood form the psychological landscape of these poems. For comfort, the poet offers a blanket, choices, time, and memory. When we least expect it, the aging body gets a voice. The wise woman reminds us, “we inherited sorrow / we also inherited strength” (35). With all this sorrow, how do we find the strength to heal and transcend? Amy Small-McKinney, Montgomery…
Review by Edith-Nicole Cameron Three years ago, I resigned from my lawyer job to write a novel. The seed had been planted two years prior, during our pandemic lockdown. In November 2020, my 4th and 6th graders and I embarked on a challenge: we enrolled in the now-defunct NaNoWriMo program and each spent thirty days drafting our first novel. My children’s stories were wild fantastical romps, fully-formed and primed for several sequels. Mine was an ode to my maternal line. Finishing it, I realized, was going to be a full-time job. At press time, it’s 2025. And while I…