Review by Ruth Hoberman Reading Jenny Qi’s Focal Point, I thought of Orpheus, whose songs so charmed the god of the Underworld, he was permitted to lead his dead wife back to life. True, Orpheus looked back when he shouldn’t have and lost her again. But on a less literal level, Jenny Qi’s poems manage a similar magic, bringing her mother before us, rescuing her from oblivion. We are each, Qi writes in her poem “Magnificent Things,” a “ghost in the making”; but these incisive, moving poems insist on poetry’s power to make us something else besides. Qi was…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger Hysterical Water is beautifully dense. Hannah Baker Saltmarsh’s writing, whether wholly her own words or found texts, demands her readers to slow down and devote time to these poems. Both intimate and expansive, these sometimes uncomfortable poems comfortably situate themselves in the ongoing conversations of feminism, motherhood, depression, and self-harm. Divided into five sections, Hysterical Water parses the connotations of the word hysterical, digging at its Greek roots and engages with the application of hysteria and all that it implies. The opening poem in the first section, “A Lady Author’s Defense of the Female…
Review by Lara Lillibridge Aileen Weintraub is a writer, journalist, and editor based in New York. She is the author of three middle-grade books: WE GOT GAME! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, which was A Mighty Girl’s Best Book of the Year; Never Too Young: 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference, winner of a Parents’ Choice Award; and Secrets of the American Museum of Natural History, a collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History. Weintraub has also had articles and essays published in The Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC, AARP, Glamour, and other publications. Knocked Down…
Review by Sunni Brown Wilkinson If one virtue of poetry is to give voice to the too-often voiceless, then Jessica Cuello’s collection Liar sings: for the forgotten child, hungry child at the back of the classroom, girl in a world without touch, girl who’s called a “whore,” girl tripping behind her mother at the laundromat, child in the hospital bed, the silent, the illiterate, the fatherless, the motherless. Liar sings the blues of the ignored, the unwanted, the untouched. And like song, the constraint of the voice, the pitch of individual witness, the tenderness for the world in spite…
Sheila L. Carter-Jones HOW A BODY Get your wife a little something the rich lady said at a rest-stop along the turnpike, when my father chauffeured her all the way to the nation’s capital. He picked out a porcelain boxer dog. Umber brown with two pups, and the rich lady paid. Each pup was connected with a metal loop that held a small chain linked to the mother’s collared neck. What is left of that vintage set is one crippled pup with three whole legs. A hind one gone up to the tibia. Disappeared like a man taken. Time hidden…
Matthew Sharpe VISUAL PROMPT I like to use visual images as prompts as I think writing about a visual stimulus creates a conversation between different parts of the brain. There are four people in this photo by Weegee, and an implied fifth, the photographer/viewer. I love the hands, and the faces, and the shapes and tones, and the mood. My suggestion for using the photo as a prompt: stare at it for at least 30 seconds without writing. Then write quickly, don’t pause too much to think, or worry about whether it’s good or even…
Keisha-Gaye Anderson WHAT SHAPE DOES YOUR INTELLIGENCE WANT TO BE? If you’re a storyteller, you probably can’t keep track of all the inspiration you experience on a daily basis. But before you get overwhelmed at the thought of writing a 300-page novel for every new realization you have, consider what other “shapes” will give your story maximum impact. Some of my stories were better served as short fiction than poetry. And some worked better as visual art. Now, I caution you–don’t randomly multi-task because you are excited by the idea of being “multi.” Trying to do everything isn’t what I’m…
J.P. Howard DISTURB THE PEACE “Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. They have to disturb the peace. Otherwise, chaos.” — James Baldwin (excerpt from a 1961 interview with Baldwin) Read this timely quote. Then read some favorite poets or writers of yours that you believe “disturb the peace” “speak truth, even when it is a difficult or painful truth” and then write a poem or…
Cindy Veach FLASH FICTION PROMPT Select a photo. Write about what has changed in your life or life in general since that photo was taken and what you would change if you could. Include a reference to a family story or legend in your piece. Cindy Veach’s most recent book is Her Kind (CavanKerry Press). She is also the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes…
Tim Tomlinson WRITING PROMPT Kate Zambreno’s “Susan Sontag” occurs in the narrator’s mind. It begins, I like to think about what other people do when they’re alone. … Some people try never to be alone. I once read that about Susan Sontag. That she insisted someone always be with her, when she was eating breakfast, when she was agitating around some idea. I wonder what it would have been like to be Susan Sontag. What follows is pure speculation: at a party the narrator encounters Susan Sontag, an encounter that engenders anxiety, self-doubt, defensive behavior. By story’s end…