Review by Ellen Miller-Mack In Leaving Paradise, Gail Thomas writes about the natural world, climate change, her dog, her partner, seasons, dementia, Bethlehem Steel and being a mother, daughter and grandmother. She engages her subjects with extraordinary attention, precision, grace and love. Many of the poems in this volume are lyrical narratives. Thomas creates emotional effect through stories, and complex emotions are deeply woven within. “Alchemy” tells the story of four generations of women through food. Great-granddaughter devours platters of meatballs from a recipe three generations old. You feel at home in this kitchen, among delectables musically rendered in…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Maria Mazziotti Gillan Snow Falls Thick outside the windows of Saint Marguerite retreat house. If only my mother had not died more than 20 years ago, I’d call her, tell her, my practical, no-nonsense mother, to stop working long enough to look out into the softening December world, here in this peaceful place where no sound enters. Memory, that savvy Trickster, pulls me back to the 17th Street kitchen with its coal stove and sweet, bread-baking aroma. It is 1947. We are having a huge blizzard and all the windows in our apartment frost over in patterns that…
Review by Marjorie Tesser Little Astronaut, J. Hope Stein’s book of poetry, channels experiences, emotions, and perspectives of early motherhood. The slim, elegant hardcover features a pleasing illustration of mother and baby sketched in white on an inky background. The book’s five sections contain poems that range from the speaker’s pregnancy to the era of her child’s toddlerhood, a span of three or so years. The poems are mostly free verse and prose poems. The variety of line length and poem shape makes the book visually appealing. The tone is often conversational, and the frankness and freshness of the…
Review by Michelle Panik Collaboration in any artistic medium—literary, visual, performative—can seem both intuitive and misguided. On one hand, creativity begets creativity, and so artists merging their ideas could seem natural. But on the other hand, artists pursue things they’re passionate about, and having such endeavors knock up against each other can be problematic. But collaboration worked for Christo and Jeanne-Claude, it worked for The Roches, and it works for Sydell Rosenberg and Amy Losak. Wing Strokes Haiku contains 44 poems that are arranged two to a page in what I like to call haiku “couplets” (not to…
Review by Emily Webber Tara Lynn Masih’s How We Disappear is a collection of twelve stories and a novella all with a strong connection to the natural world and characters who are recreating their own worlds. Masih’s characters are either trying to disappear into something new or afraid they will disappear. The stories take the reader to different environments and time periods including Utah, France, Belgium, and Puerto Rico, all richly detailed landscapes and with complex characters equally as interesting as the places they inhabit. These stories tell us what happens when we look away from our current…
Review by Sherre Vernon Sharon Dolin is the author of seven books of poetry including Imperfect Present. She is a translator, an essayist, and a teacher—the poet who won the 2012 AWP Donald Hall Prize for her collection Burn and Dodge. Dolin was a 2021 NEA Fellowship recipient, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a Fulbright Scholar. She serves as an associate editor for Barrow Street Press. In Imperfect Present, Dolin merges her skills as a translator and poet. This is a collection that aptly captures the plurality of meaning present in the mind of anyone who skips in and…
Review by Laura Dennis Sometimes literature creates what can only be described as either a disquieting comfort or a comforting disquiet. The comfort comes from the recognition of shared feelings and experiences, the disquiet from the nature of what is shared. Such was my experience reading former Cincinnati Poet Laureate Pauletta Hansel’s latest poetry collection, Heartbreak Tree. Published in 2022, the volume contains pieces which were clearly written during or after COVID lockdown, a time of fearful introspection that for some creatives seems to have yielded extraordinary if unsettling fruit. At least this is how I imagine the genesis…
MOTHER FOLK: Folktales, Wisdom, and Lore in Motherhood MER Mixed Genre Folio Curated by DeMisty Bellinger Featuring M.A.M.A. Issue 53 Featuring Dayna Patterson, Poetry, and Jessica Caldas, Art
Lisa Ampleman Unremarkable My deepest sadnesses are completely ordinary. Not the predicament of roundworms as the shuttle Columbia, making its way homeward, is eaten through by heated plasma, leaving their thermos falling solo through the stratosphere. No word can capture that experience, but so many lose a pregnancy that there’s a name for their children born later: rainbow babies. The phrase harnesses the mythology of a watery disaster, a promise of future safety. I kept thinking my sorrow was something special, but it was extraordinarily common. The star-scar in my navel where they…
Nicole Brooks The Mother Speaks I shrink to a diamond My daughter palms. I’m squat As the littlest Russian doll. She relishes my dispersion Of light, holds me to the Morning sun. Secures me In a golden ring’s claws, Bands her broken love Vein, marrying my pain. I Weigh on her hand. She Springs me from the prongs, Clicks me into a locket Worn against her chest. It is too much. She hot glues me To a magnet. A day of Holding coupons Fast to the fridge — She sees it is wrong. Places me in the Black Forest…