Sarah Browning Borrowing Happiness from Tomorrow It’s so dry this year the sycamores are shedding their enormous leaves, palms of crackle and nerve littering the yard mid-August, while exhaust from futuristic mowers the city hauls from rec center to rec center hangs gray over our neighbor Joan’s roses; we require the morning – the atmosphere, we say – to absorb it all faultlessly: noise, exhaust, our fecklessness. I woke at 5 this morning. It’s cooler for a change. We’d thrown the windows wide in celebration and as I fretted my bladder and whether to wrench my suddenly old and…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Laura Dennis The expression “mom in space,” might bring to mind a woman suffering from “mom brain,” COVID brain fog, or some combination thereof. The cover of Lisa Ampleman’s third full-length poetry collection, however, indicates we are talking about actual space, as in outer space, an impression confirmed by the opening epigraph from Diane Ackerman’s space-opera, The Planets. That is not to say that other notions of space are absent from Mom in Space. Quite the contrary: it appears in myriad forms, as do varying takes on motherhood, rendering “mom in space” a highly polysemic expression, full…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg Perhaps it was serendipitous that Barbara Crooker’s evocative and engaging book of poems on the rewards and ravages of aging landed in my hands as I approach my seventieth year. Like many of a certain age, I began to watch, with both wonder and wistfulness, how the abundance and ease of life reverses itself slowly and slyly— the dwindling of friends and intimates, the increased challenges within the corporeal realm. This is not to say that Crooker’s observations are dire or maudlin; her poetic acumen is cautious but gracious, and not without humor on occasion.…
Submissions on Medical Motherhood MER Online folio open 7/15-8/5 For an MER Online folio themed “Medical Motherhood” guest edited by Sarah Dalton, MER seeks poems, fiction, and prose centered on the experiences of mothers and parents of children with disabilities and/or children with complex medical needs. ***Submit flash prose or up to 3 poems; hybrid works are welcome, however the submission’s total word count should not exceed 1000 words Submissions open July 15 and close August 5 EDT. Simultaneous submissions okay; unpublished work only please. If you need to contact us, you may do so at [email protected]. We look…
Review by Carla Panciera Although Take Me With You Next Time is Janis Hubschman’s debut collection, the author is no stranger to the literary world. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and have garnered prizes from the Bellingham Review and Glimmer Train. These are stories about women, most of whom are established in careers and relationships. In fact, they are firmly in the midst of their complicated lives. One such complication involves the men they married: Their husbands are recovering from or succumbing to brain tumors, cancer, dementia, addiction. One has been unfaithful. But the women persist. They…
Review by W.J. Herbert Renunciation and Embrace in Maurya Simon’s La Sirena The mystical Pacific coupled with the saga of a young girl’s coming-of-age animate La Sirena, a novella in verse by the poet Maurya Simon. The collection, a finalist for the 2023 Vern Rutsala Prize, marries auto-fictional elements with traditional motifs to create a modern riff on a classic 19th century tale. A vibrant contribution to feminist re-castings of myth and fairytale, poems in Simon’s retelling of “The Little Mermaid” employ multiple contemporary voices, but her heroine, richly-textured and magical, is most compelling. More than an adolescent’s awakening…
Review by Anna Rollins Refraction: a review of Cat Pleska’s My Life in Water Cat Pleska’s gorgeous memoir, My Life in Water (Uncollected Press, 2024), begins with a near drowning: her own, at 6 months of age. Her teenage babysitter Norma is not neglectful. Her mistake is a momentary lapse: she steps away from the tub, just briefly, to grab a towel to wrap and warm the freshly bathed baby. In the essay entitled, “Wash Me Clean,” the author observes her own past trauma as third-person spectator: “there, completely underwater, lay the baby, staring wide-eyed up at the…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger Dorinda Wegener’s debut poetry collection, Four Fields, is at once brave and vulnerable. She exposes all aspects of parent/child relationships, with the speaker’s mother, then father, in her richly written poetry. Although approachable, these poems require time to parse and readers may benefit from multiple readings to experience the book completely. Still, Wegener’s words warrant wallowing in for some time. Divided into four parts, there is a metaphor centered in agriculture. Section I focuses on the mother figure, and the relationship between this mother and daughter—including the good, the complicated, and the painful aspects.…
Review by Meghan Sterling Contending with Ghosts: The Tapestry of Place and Loss in Abbie Kiefer’s Certain Shelter A few months ago, a fellow Maine poet reached out to me to ask if I would be willing to read her latest collection, Certain Shelter, thinking my residence in her hometown might be of interest. She was right—reviewing a collection that takes place in the town I now call home was an interesting read. But there was more here than connection to place. I read Abbie Kiefer’s manuscript with recognition and urgency, exploring each poem hungrily. Like Kiefer, I am…
Review by Sharon Tracey Canticle for Remnant Days is Jane C. Miller’s first full-length poetry collection and she has compressed a lifetime within its pages. The poems are a measuring, a looking back and then forward, marking the days, the longing and joy; where loves goes, where it’s raised. Childhood, marriage, children, love, and loss. The self ever changing. The book, divided into four sections of roughly equal length, evoke the seasons and rhythms of change. Many poems are tinged with color and there’s the sensation of a light touch, memory as brushstroke. Time is a star subject and…