Review by Carole Mertz Dowd’s literary Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems is as delightful and colorful as the famous avian sketches of the renowned bird watcher. The poet records the lives of Lucy and John James via facts and imaginings, told mainly through Lucy’s viewpoint. Actual journal entries by Audubon are set in italics to distinguish fact from fiction. Dowd conveys other narratives through poems and imagined diary entries, as if written by Lucy. “Monsieur,” the opening poem, (p.3) describes Lucy Bakewell’s first meeting of Audubon, recorded as a diary entry, as if from Norristown, Pennsylvania in 1804. Today our neighbor…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Mom Egg Review vol. 18 – HOME Purchase the print issue of MER 18. Purchase the PDF issue (just $5) We proudly announce our 18th annual issue of Mom Egg Review, themed HOME. Back in 2019, in a different world, we conceived of an issue on the subject. Now, as we shelter in place, we experience new relationships with our dwellings. The diverse, and sometimes eerily prescient, works in this issue wrestle with issues surrounding the nature of home. Is a home a place, a feeling, a center, a community? Home land. Home base. Torn between homes. Unhoused. Also…
Patrice Boyer Claeys Author’s Note – On Writing The Machinery of Grace At the end of my poetry reading in a downtown Chicago high-rise, one man exclaimed, “We want your next collection to be an all-cento book!” It had happened over and over as I moved from private salons to bookstores to art galleries reading from my first book, Lovely Daughter of the Shattering. It was the centos that wowed my audiences. Most people attending were not writers, and they marveled to think that individual lines from other poets could come together—like magic—to create an entirely new piece. He got…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen The past, present and future are melded tightly in Rebecca Pelky’s debut book of poetry, Horizon of the Dog Woman. These poems sing of a traditional Native American philosophy of life. This philosophy encompasses generations of Native women who have chosen to exist within the continuum of colonial oppression. In Pelky’s worldview, the ravages of colonialism still resonate. The image of the “dog woman” embodies the strength of the feminine principle and its ultimate sacredness from which life springs. The dog image is also a constellation in the night’s sky and an archetype. Pelky…
What and Where is HOME? The new issue of Mom Egg Review considers the nature of “home”— Is a home a place, a feeling, a center, a community? Home land. Home base. Torn between homes. Unhoused. Also home neighborhood, others’ homes, away from home. The earth as home. Can work be a home? Can a poem be a home? Mom Egg Review writers explore “Home” through the lens of motherhood. Cover art – Susan McClain Craig Purchase the print issue. Purchase the PDF issue. Contributors to MER 18 HOME
MER VOX Quarterly – Spring 2020 Visions of Home: A MER VOX Poetry Folio Featuring Melissa Andres,Elana Bell, Ann Farley, Melissa Joplin Higley, Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, Veronica Kornberg, Libby Maxey, Jendi Reiter, Margaret Rozga, Brad Shurmantine, Tezozomoc, Pramila Venkateswaran, Nicola Waldron, Jane Yolen M.A.M.A. Issue 41 – Poetry Ann E. Wallace, Art Michele Landel You’re Invited! Mom Egg Review Vol. 18 “HOME” Launch Party & Reading Sat. May 9th, 4 – 6 PM Poets House NYC
Visions of Home: A Poetry Folio This spring, in print and online, Mom Egg Review and MER VOX consider the many facets of HOME. The poets in this folio explore, among other issues, the mother’s body as home, lost and adopted homes, the pleasures and frustrations of home, being at home at work and in the world. We invite you in to the homes conjured by our featured poets. — Marjorie Tesser Featuring poems by: Melissa Andres Elana Bell Ann Farley Melissa Joplin Higley Jennifer Schomburg Kanke Veronica Kornberg Libby Maxey Jendi Reiter Margaret Rozga Brad Shurmantine Tezozomoc…
Margaret Rozga Home in the Nick of Time Mid-sentence we rise from park benches, mothers, nannies, grandmas, and call children down from their climbing. Starlings flutter, lift off power lines, sparrows flit into the brush, tufts from the cottonwood spiral down like innocence falling. Translucence rolls in from the west, greens the sky. A neighborhood cat slinks across the street. First slant of rain slicks the porch— wooden steps soon slippery as gossip— blurring our vision, hard, hard rain. Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga has published four books, including Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems (2017), written with…
Pramila Venkateswaran History of my Suitcase I drag the large green suitcase from its corner, clouds of cobwebs and dust rising from it making me sneeze. Peering into its dark emptiness, I hear Amma’s quiet words, smell incense and sandalwood, sweat and musk, invoking unknown streets snaking behind highways and store fronts blazing their neon marquees. It will once again make its way across the Atlantic, over deserts and warring nations to lush paddy fields, orchards and spires, before making its way back to its home, inviting a dense skein of cobwebs to veil lacerations, broken zippers and locks, but…
Melissa Joplin Higley A Mother’s Lament He knew her as the beginning. A union of bodies divided into another, then replicated exponentially; he grew inside her. Soon, his heartbeat patterned hers. He came to know her murmurs and sighs, shortened and breathy. He heard small voices: outside—a brother, a sister—chanting bits of nursery rhymes, cupping small hands over small songs, welcoming the mystery in her belly. * She sang to him, too, while she washed dishes, her belly pressing against the edge of the sink more each day. She dipped her hands again and again into iridescence. She knew…