Review by Glenis Redmond In We are not Wearing Helmets, Cheryl Boyce Taylor populates the poetic landscape with flowers: Hibiscus. Delphiniums. Morning glories. Petunias. Peonies. Cosmos. Hydrangeas. Moonflowers. The litany goes on and on, proving how this Trinidadian poet not only loves blossoms but also knows them. She weaves a floral chain as an extended metaphor throughout the entire collection that transports the reader. Though the ground is riddled with emotional land mines, Taylor does not sidestep them but uses floral imagery to deftly wield her elegiac pen to uplift the reader and memorialize her loved ones. Taylor’s blooms act as portals for…
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Review by Ellen Miller-Mack Carol Potter, a strong swimmer though language and experience, is an imaginative, far-ranging and often funny poet. What Happens Now is Anyone’s Guess is her sixth collection of poems, awarded the 2021 Pacific Coast Series Award from Beyond Baroque Books. Other books include Some Slow Bees, a winner of the 2014 Field Poetry Prize from Oberlin College Press, Otherwise Obedient (Red Hen Press, 2007), a finalist in the Lambda LGBT awards for 2007, and Short History of Pets which won the 1999 Cleveland State Poetry Center Award and the Balcones Award. Two previous books were published by Alice James Books:…
Review by Emily Webber Ways the World Could End, Kim Hooper’s latest novel, is intricately constructed and deals with mourning, sexual identity, developmental disorders, confronting secrets, acts of violence, and the complicated act of forgiveness. There’s a lot the novel tackles, and Hooper handles it all well, giving each area the focus and depth it deserves. In the opening chapter, Dave, a doomsday-obsessed prepper, discusses the end of life as we know it. We’ve had a good run, as a species. Half a million years. We’ve built cities from nothing, created complex languages, visited outer space. We’ve invented…
Review by Julia Lisella Pigeon Soup and Other Stories is a slim volume of interconnected short stories set in the 1970s in Canada that gives us a glimpse into the first-generation post-WWII Italian immigrants and their second-generation Canadian children. As in most immigrant families, the “Old World” and the “New World” do battle as the older generation seeks to understand the younger assimilated generation. Sometimes generations are blind to each other’s challenges and needs, and at other times these characters understand each other silently and completely. Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli, the author of several children’s books, romance novels and the…
Interview: Neema Avashia Lives in Another Appalachia by Kristen Paulson-Nguyen Neema Avashia is the author of Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, which was released from West Virginia University Press in March 2022. Much of her writing pertains to the unique experience of growing up as a member of a tight-knit Indian community in West Virginia, where Indian community members comprised less than half of one percent of the state population. Avashia’s essays have been published in The Bitter Southerner, Kenyon Review Online, and Cosmonauts Avenue, among other outlets. She recently read her work…
Review by Katy Carl What is the question in question? We are left to formulate and to pose it ourselves, and yet the poetic texts of Marjorie Maddox’s Begin with a Question leave the reader certain that the endeavor is worth taking up. A professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University and an editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Maddox has been celebrated within and beyond the world of religiously themed poetry for her probing insight and nimble wit. Her previous work spans a wide range, from topical poetry—on baseball, current events, education, emotion,…
Poem of the Month July 2022 Teresa Tumminello Brader (W)hole Filling one of her orifices with one part of his body is no longer enough. He yearns to crawl inside her. He wants to miniaturize his whole body, insert it into a less obvious entry point—for instance, the fenestra of her ear— then slide down the walls of her capillaries and swim in the bayous of her blood. If she learns how to shrink before he does, he’ll put her in his pocket, stroke the whole of her with the pad of his thumb all day…
Review by Dylan Ward The uncharted territory of parenthood is both wildly unforgiving and rewarding. With Blame It on the Serpent, Susan Vespoli explores the joys, fears, and sorrows of parenting. Traversing time and place, she threads together an affecting contemplation of her identity as a mother through the lens of raw pain, from divorce or blistering conflicts with addiction, amid her children’s coming-of-age. Vespoli earned an MFA in Creative Writing after a “mid-life explosion.” She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and author of two chapbooks. A mother who deeply loved her children while bearing the burdens and scars…
Review by Celia Jeffries Ellen Meeropol is a fearless writer. When she picks up her pen and follows her characters, she goes to places and situations lesser writers might avoid: a young pregnant woman awaiting trial (House Arrest, 2011); an innocent academic pulled aside by airport security and incarcerated in a secret holding cell (On Hurricane Island, 2015); a young man walking the blurred reality line of man versus nature (Kinship of Clover, 2017); two sisters estranged by political choices and actions (Her Sister’s Tattoo, 2020). In her latest book, The Lost Women of Azalea Court (September 2022), Meeropol’s characters…
In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling, in dissent, and to help support women’s rights and health, Mom Egg Review will donate all profits from sale of MER’s The Body issue to Planned Parenthood, through 7/4/22. MER 10 “The Body” $5