Review by Christine Stewart-Nuñez I usually don’t start a review of someone else’s poetry—especially such haunting work as Celia Lisset Alvarez’s—with a reference to my own experience, but I’m no stranger to writing about death, and Multiverses takes up loss, too: the loss of an infant, of a miscarried pregnancy, of a beloved uncle, of a problematic father. When I compare what I’ve had to say with Alvarez’s Multiverses, however, I feel cowardly. I avoided imagining futures for the pregnancies I’d lost because I didn’t want to grieve fiction, but Alvarez? She gives those fictions—those futures—entire poems. In doing…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Lara Lillibridge Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry by Jennifer Jean is a 25-page teaching manual designed to be used with or without the chapbook Object Lesson by the same author. If you don’t have the book, there are substitute poems listed that are “easily found online.”(3) Jennifer Jean is the founder of Free2Write Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors, and this book is based on the curriculum she developed. This guide was designed for use by teachers, book clubs, and workshop facilitators working with trauma-affinity groups. I was interested in this book to develop my own…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg Poetry about illness and the journey toward recovery can be the most challenging to write. It is a daunting task to expose the intimate and raw moments of discovery and fear that accompany diagnosis and treatment, and to capture these fragile episodes in language that is eloquent and evocative. Kyle Potvin’s poems in Loosen are both brave and gently lyrical, quietly rendered yet resounding on the page. We feel her unmooring from certainty as she orbits hope, creating reverie from memory and exultation in day-to-day living. In “Diagnosis” (4) the determined music of her words…
Review by Tasslyn Magnusson I am a poet and historian. My dissertation examined the relationship between memory, national identity, and race in our public spaces. I am still deeply interested in how we use words, symbols, and the evidence of the past to tell stories about who we are. So, when I opened Poem That Never Ends by Silvina López Medin, I knew I had found a new love. Poem That Never Ends is a fascinating and beautiful work that shapes a narrative about her familial past, present, and future. Using poetry, prose, and image, she builds a way…
Review by Jamie Wendt Anne Graue’s first full-length collection of poetry, Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, expresses the beauty and loss rooted in Kansas. This collection was fittingly published by Woodley Press, a small publishing company dedicated to showcasing Kansas artists and subjects. Divided into three sections, Graue’s book moves from narrative childhood memories in Kansas to lyrical and metaphorical poems revolving around the speaker’s mother in addition to poems about belonging in one’s family. Some poems in the third section bring readers outside of Kansas to Kenya, where the author taught for three years, as well as meditations on parenting…
MER VOX Quarterly – Summer June 2021 ESCAPE – Ekphrastic Challenge & Other Curated Poems Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Featuring Art by Keisha-Gaye Anderson. Featuring Poetry by Gabby Gilliam, Martina McGowan, Sarah Dickenson Snyder, Dawn Terpstra, Jericho Hocket, Helen Bournas-Ney, Sonya Schneider, Martha Silano M.A.M.A. Issue 47 Art Henny Burnett Poetry Sarah Freligh Poem: Teaching My Mother to Zoom Tim Tomlinson
Welcome to the June 2021 MER VOX: Ekphrastic Challenge & Other Poems For this VOX, we’ve curated a folio of poems that engage with or echo Keisha-Gaye Anderson’s evocative work of art titled “Escape.” We loved Anderson’s use of colors and her imagery that depicted an expansion of “the mother,” both physically and metaphorically. To where does she escape? From what? Who is she? Where is she going? The poems—some written as ekphrastic responses to the painting and others chosen because we felt they added different dimensions—all interact with the movements in Anderson’s work. Dawn Terpstra describes the figure as:…
Gabby Gilliam Protogenoi The leaking nipple of a faceless mother speckled like Cerillos turquoise undulates through a polished universe all ass and hip and dripping milk, she turns her back on the expanse of space watches Prometheus’ gift raze heavenly body disarmed as her children launch tampon-shaped rockets into the sky feathery smoke grasping for lungs a downy blanket of pollution that drains the world of its color except for the feverish red of destruction and flame. Gabby Gilliam lives in the DC metro area. Her poetry has appeared in The Chesapeake Reader, The Fredericksburg Literary Arts…
Martina McGowan Earth Mother —After Pat McCade Mother to all Transforming stardust into life With the amniotic fluid That runs through my veins I am the holy sky walker Holy surface walker Life-bearer Life-bringer Hope for the living And respite for the dying All truth and light Firmly held within my locks Commissioned to speak Into all beings Breathing sage and time Bearing the candle of life The sacred center Until the other shore is reached A temporary end By celestial writ I speak life and memory Memorializing past lives Molding futures I am the holy walker Mother to…
Sarah Dickenson Snyder It May Be Up to Us This bruised earth so full of rockets and fire may need a woman’s touch, our slow-moving ripples, our functional nipples, the engine of braided bigness as the glue of healing. We feel the pull from far stars. Don’t be afraid of darkness— it’s the hinge to everywhere we can’t see, it’s where elsewhere resides. Remember how we open ourselves, let life rise, and know the dust of us. Of other worlds. Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, wants to be a better watercolor painter, and rides…