Margaret D. Stetz “Whistler’s Mother” How strange how wrong a title Arrangement in Grey and Black for what begins in reddest flows of blood and grows like bars of color layered on a rainbow the mother-child relationship encompassing serenity of blue and green of hope sometimes a rage of purple or yellow brightness signifying warmth kaleidoscopically fragmented, intertwined. ++++And yet how common this desire of the son to simplify to distance to abstract to paint the mother as an object in a room that he will leave, has left already, imagining age as placid paleness requiring nothing, satisfied…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Hilde Weisert Belly Is this what you think of when dying? The white tunnel not to Heaven but where you came from, a belly, your source. The hands guiding you, your mother’s hands, fussing to get you ready one last time? Hilde Weisert’s poem ‘Ars Poetica’ in MER 14 went on to win the 2017 Gretchen Warren Award (New England Poetry Club). Her 2015 poetry collection, The Scheme of Things, was published by David Robert Books. Her poems have appeared in Ms, Cincinnati Review, The New York Times, Plume, The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, etc.,…
Lisa Briana Williams The Steamroller Tries to Remain Light It is too easy to say everything we were told about motherhood is a lie. More true to say I absorbed nothing but goodness until it came for me—that “goodness”—to wrangle with & prove what else good may be. Each person inhabiting may be is different—yet I try & try to find formulas: this honey for that bitter room: that sofa to rest on a tongue. I have images of myself as a child sitting quietly in a yard, abandoned & calm. But one child in a yard is…
Review by Jennifer Martelli The cover image of Susan Rich’s Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems is Caravan by the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. This bright and complex image shows a woman at a piano in a small caravan outfitted with intricate pulleys and wheels, set against a shadowy landscape. The book is dedicated to her contemporary and friend, Leonora Carrington, the surrealist artist and political activist. Rich’s work reflects this same masterful and surreal shape-shifting and travel, as well as a precise palping of the world’s political heartbeat. While the collection signals movement—the titles…
Review by Emily Webber Deadheading & Other Stories, Beth Gilstrap’s short story collection, portrays women in the Carolinas as they endure hardship and process trauma, and explores our connection with the natural world and family. Gilstrap’s flash fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Ninth Letter, as well as the Best Microfiction Anthology. She creates stories lush with details and sensations, even in short spaces. She showcases these skills in the flash fiction and longer works that make up this collection. Place is not merely a backdrop in these stories; it is in the bones…
Review by Christine Beck Jennifer Jean’s new book of poetry, Object Lesson, is not an easy read. The topic that weaves her poems together is the objectification and pain experienced by women who are mired in, or have escaped from, what is euphemistically called “sex work.” Jasmine Grace Marino, founder and director of Bags of Hope Ministries, who was a sex worker for eight years and who has been out of that life for the past thirteen years, writes an introduction. She says about the film “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts stars as a prostitute, “…not once did…
Review by Carole Mertz Why should a discussion of W.G. Sebald (think Austerlitz, 2001) arise between two British women seated in a Norfolk pub of an early afternoon? But the women, Fran and Annie, old friends, are interested in literature and this banter is typical of their literary exchanges. A third character, Rachel, enters on page 11. She’s a wealthy American who teaches the art of creative writing and makes “good money,” thinks Annie, who “judges from her clothes—unaware her new pal benefits from an ample family trust fund.” Then young Tamsin appears and soon Thomas, a passionate Shelley follower.…
Review by Jennifer Martelli The poems in Rebecca Hart Olander’s debut collection, Uncertain Acrobats, not only recollect a father’s life, but also navigate the landscape of grief, making all movement breathtaking and physical. Olander’s mastery in her construction of the book belies whatever uncertainty or hesitancy the daughter—the speaker—has as she travels a world without her father. The poems are arranged so well, and with such precision of imagery and language, I trusted and moved with the speaker. The poems reflect the gorgeous image on the cover of the book: three women (or are they the same woman?) dancing…
Review by Michelle Panik While the organization of Cammy Thomas’s latest poetry collection, Tremors, is simple—three parts that address each stage of the poet’s life—the material is not. Tucked within these pages are poems both humorous and sober, declarative and unsure, with the unifying theme being tremors—both physical and figurative. Part I concerns Thomas’s childhood growing up on rural Long Island. Here, the tremors are of strength, and a vulnerable child often finds herself at the mercy of unreliable caretakers. “Mum”—which is a reference to both moms and secrecy—tells of hiding from a father often armed with a whip…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger A Spell for Living is a visually striking collection of poetry from poet Keisha-Gaye Anderson. In her third collection, Anderson pairs her poems with original pen and ink drawings, adding movement and intimacy to the page. The conversational tone and the drawings create a document not unlike a personal journal where the writer has invited us to see her mind at work. But these are spells, too, or poems meant to foment magic for a people. Keisha-Gaye Anderson’s biography is full of interesting and varied detours. She is a poet, visual artist, and businesswoman…