Review by Celia Jeffries Although there are two O’s in Oona, the title of Alice Lyons’ extraordinary debut novel, that vowel never appears within the pages of the book itself. It’s a testament to Lyons’ talent that this reader did not notice the missing letter until its absence was pointed out by another. Lyons is a poet and painter, born in America but living by choice within range of Ben Bulben, the massive flat-topped hill in Yeats country in the West of Ireland. Yeats was another poet who liked to do the ‘difficult’ with language, sometimes choosing to write with…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Lisa C. Taylor This stunner of a collection by the award-winning author of four previous poetry collections brings the reader into a conjured world of broken agreements, abuse, and mental illness, crafted with a deft and original lyricism. The opening poem, Agape Feast recalls the tradition of a Christian fellowship meal that pays homage to the meals Jesus shared with his disciples. Like much of this collection, the sacred and the familial are turned inside out and churned up until traditional beliefs and relationships reveal their dark underbellies. These Gods will not protect you. They are strangleholds…
Review by Lara Lillibridge According to the book jacket, Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of the poetry collections Rue, The End of Pink, and Rag & Bone. She has also written the essay collection Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and notable essays in the Best American series. She teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing program at University of Minnesota. However, I much prefer her own website’s description, “Kathryn Nuernberger is an essayist and poet who writes about the…
Review by Christine E. Salvatore It took me a long time to write this review and one small reason might be the immense amount of craft and the nuanced beauty that went into these poems. When someone else’s writing calls your own writing skill into question, how to write about that writing? How to explicate those poems? How to rise from immersion in a delicately and thoroughly rendered world full of rhyme and imagery that feels like an elixir every time you read? M.B. Powell’s collection of poems, In Relation to the Surface, surpasses my already high expectations for this…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In Viable, Chloe Yelena Miller gives herself space to mourn, celebrate, and atone. This debut full-length collection is a candid chronicle of Miller’s experiences with miscarriage, pregnancy, and new motherhood. Miller finds the melody in the language given to women regarding reproduction and loss. And to address these heavy events in her life, she looks to where she finds comfort: the English and Italian language, food, family, and poetry. Viable begins with the poem “Mid-Thirties.” The language here is easy, inviting, and the perspective borders somewhere between innocent witness and desperation. Here, a toddle hides…
In an extraordinary year, extraordinary voices on mothers, mothering, and motherhood. Mom Egg Review Vol. 19 Order the Print Journal Order a PDF Copy Marjorie Tesser, Editor in Chief Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach, Poetry Editors Contributors
Review by Laura Dennis If I had to choose two words to talk about the past twelve months–let’s make that two constructive words–intersectionality and vulnerability would be strong contenders. Whether it be a deep dive into the work of Brené Brown or a reckoning with structural racism, these two topics have been on many people’s minds. It comes as no surprise, then, that Athena Dixon’s essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, feels so relevant: intersectionality and vulnerability reverberate from page to page. Dixon explores the nuances of what it means to be Black (including how and what kind of…
Review by Sherre Vernon Sharon Tracey is the author of two poetry collections, Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists and What I Remember Most is Everything. Her work has appeared in The Worcester Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Rain Taxi and elsewhere. She currently serves on the board of Perugia Press and is based in western Massachusetts. Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists is collection of poetry offered as sort of live exhibit meant to be attended. As we first enter, we are greeted by epigraphs from Sappho and Simonides of Ceos. Then, between opening and closing remarks offered as single poems, Sharon Tracey tours us through four curated galleries of…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Nancy Gerber’s fictionalized first-person account of a boy coming of age just before the war in Nazi Germany has an authenticity that echoes throughout. Karl is engaging, vacillating between adolescent insecurity, and a beginning awareness of the dangers that many around him seem to ignore. The author, Nancy Gerber, felt compelled to tell her father’s story, fictionalizing what she did not know. As she said in her preface, “My father rarely spoke of his past, and I knew few details of his early life” (xiii). Her research fills in the blanks of what was…
Welcome to the March 2021 VOX Folio: Healing and Recovery In her poem, “I Ask a Pearl Diver to Bring You Back From the Dead,” Joan Kwon Glass writes, Ribbons of seaweed blossom at our feet and nearby mollusks spin sand into pearls. Every darkness we bear hides such small mercies. The poems in this VOX folio cull the darkness of our recent past for small mercies. We are tired, outraged, and grieving. Tina Cane opens her poem “Hold” describing this witnessing: Sometimes +++it’s a shock event+++ in lieu of a total coup an instance more akin+++ to the…