Review by Laura Dennis Back in graduate school, I discovered prose poet Francis Ponge, who famously said, “Another way of approaching the thing is to consider it unnamed, unnamable.” I was fascinated by his way of looking at the world, his wit, and his use of words. Sadly, I could not linger over his work, what with all the other titles on my reading list and the exams that loomed ahead. Ponge came to mind again, however, as I immersed myself in Sarah Wolfson’s début poetry collection, A Common Name for Everything. Although Wolfson’s work is very much its…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Emily Webber Lisa A. Sturm’s debut novel, Echoed in My Bones, does not avoid the hard and complicated aspects of adoption, the foster care system, and dealing with past trauma. However, Sturm also manages to pull a thread of hope and love throughout the novel. At its core of Echoed in My Bones is about the decisions people make in order to survive and how those decisions echo through life. The novel highlights the difficult choices people make in order to survive, being caught up in the foster care system, growing up with an absent or drug-addicted parent,…
Review by Tasslyn Magnusson The Book of Kells, by Barbara Crooker, opens with the evocative line, “Night opens its woven basket,” (3) from the poem “Samhain.” This was unexpected and delightful. Unexpected as when the “Introduction” describes the Book of Kells as one of the most spectacular examples of illuminated manuscripts and is “widely regarding as Ireland’s finest treasure,” (ix), I thought I’d be reading more traditionally analytical text. Delightful, as once I read those lines, I knew that Barbara Crooker would be using the powerful tools of poetry to explore and analyze this extraordinary document. Not that historical…
MER VOX Quarterly – Winter 2019 December, 2019 Sacred Spaces: A Poetry Folio Curated by Cindy Veach and Jennifer Martelli Featured Poets: Angelique Zobitz Anna V. Q. Ross Mary Buchinger Bodwell Allison Blevins Tina Kelley Adina Kopinsky Dayna Patterson Deborah Bacharach Jennifer Givhan
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach In her poem, “We manage limited resources against unlimited needs,” Angelique Zobitz writes, So we cleave to one another tight as wet clothes plastered to damp bodies. The poems in this VOX folio explore the nature of this cleaving: the need for community and the spaces we create for this cleaving as mothers. This closeness—whether to a child, a partner, the reader, or a spirit—resonates in these poems with truth and language. Adina Kopinsky’s poem, “Holy Ground,” weaves the story of Moses with the story of motherhood as she reminds the…
Anna V. Q. Ross Heaven Knows It’s like this—some days, you wake up and the light in the field is like swimming or moving through a clear fog, something that pushes back, not startling but steady pressure, the wall-to-wall of the world cruising against your skin. Up ahead, a goldfinch flickers, and what is it that you can’t remember—the years ago No! you said to that boy in a Dublin bar before stumbling down a flight of stairs to be sick, the slick surface of the bathroom mirror slapping you back from the brink of a different bed in a…
Angelique Zobitz We manage limited resources against unlimited needs so we cleave to one another tight as wet clothes plastered to damp bodies we – open hydrants that lift one another off our feet choose belief in the enough soothe, press this kiss into the soft cheek, benediction in every breath freedom to cry into the heft of your chest sorrow and sweat you hold my quivering palm in your steady hand I lean into the precious community as contact sport draw water from communion full and manifold among the vine, care crafted in the creases a body composed of…
Mary Buchinger [selections from The Transformation of Material Things] a baby cries & I turn to see what’s the matter a woman robed in blue climbs steep cellar stairs emerges beside me into grey morning air the wailing baby cradled in her arms that’s her spiritual cry the woman explains & yes I feel it scrape inside ° After I wash the dishes I turn off the kitchen light & everything is dark It is a soft darkness with sharp edges I close my eyes to call to mind the map of this place the relationships of objects myself in…
Allison Blevins The Name in the Doorway My daughter waits in the doorway. She mouths Mom silently. My name floats from her mouth, hovers wordless above my body in bed. A blue and humming three-winged bird, my name waits and waits, lands softly on my mouth to wake my body from sleep, soft as the start of a pistol, soft as a lurching coaster, soft as a table leg in the night. My daughter is gone. Only the blurred and glowing outline of her body fills the frame. Maybe the stomach ached. Maybe the spider shadow crept. Maybe the…
Tina Kelley Like You Are, for Me Pa, your binoculars make me bionic. They transport me to three feet away from the warblers invading the oak. I can see one’s breast expand as it starts to sing, its beak trembling in proud vibrato. God is the ding in the windshield, always there, changing the seeing. You help me tell flycatchers apart. My first birthday after your death, my son reminded me, after the song, “Mommy, chocolate cake is more better than crying.” Clearest sight outlasts tears, shows eye rings and wing bars. Thanks to you, I am right with…