Review by Laura Dennis In recent months, my life has been crisscrossed by all sorts of wounds, from minor injuries that refuse to heal to the global fractures caused by inequality, racism, and most recently, coronavirus. Not that these problems are all that new–even the virus probably arrived earlier than we think. Still, we struggle to articulate them and we seek some form of response, as Ann E. Wallace’s début poetry collection, Counting by Sevens, reveals. Divided into three parts, Counting by Sevens both exposes and embodies myriad aspects of the human experience. The first section, “America, Another Day,”…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Sandra Anfang Ann Keniston is the author of two previously published poetry collections, The Caution of Human Gestures (David Robert Books, 2005), and the chapbook, November Wasps: Elegies (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is the co-editor of The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st Century Anthology (McFarland, 2012), and the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants in poetry. Widely published in poetry journals, Keniston is professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno and a poetry teacher in local schools. In this dexterously crafted collection of poems, the reader is invited into the interior life…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg I first became familiar with Emily Bilman’s poetry while working on an international project on Ekphrasis, poetic interpretations of visual and aural artistic works. We were both poets with work posted/published in conjunction with the project, called “Convergence: Painted Poetry and Painterly Poetics.” I was struck by Bilman’s skillful distillation of large ideas in precise and eloquent language, finding poignancy and a sense of intimacy in responding to abstract art. The Threshold of Broken Waters contains five sections of poems that traverse natural and emotional landscapes, honors the birth of poems and children, and celebrates…
Margie Shaheed, Poetry and María Linares, Art Examining Prejudice Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 43rd edition of this scholarly discourse. Literature intersects with art to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA #artandmotherhood Margie Shaheed What I Wish I Could’ve Done if i had the words of a dictionary in my pocket…
Legacy – Rage Hezekiah Legacy is a new series in which poets and writers reflect on a writer or writers who inspired them, whose works spoke to and influenced them and whose legacy continues to inform their work. Curated by Ana C.H. Silva. I remember reading Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” in the bathroom of my childhood home. I was around eight years old, and my parents kept a waterlogged anthology in a stack of books for bathroom reading. I was likely pretty confused by what I had read, but I remember feeling as though I’d stumbled upon something I wasn’t…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen In her debut book, Cosmic Pockets, Joann Renee Boswell’s poetry is kinetic and visceral. Interspersing poetry with original photography, her words seem to lift off the page and the reader is immediately suctioned into a raucous, effervescent and hopeful world. Whimsical in tone, yet entirely meditative, these poems sparkle with the recognition that even with chaos there is growth and progress. Boswell is fearless in experimenting with poetic form using calligrams and concrete structures. Enchantingly apropos amidst the calamitous rioting, and careless deliberations of the current administration, Boswell’s poetry seems to pull back to…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett Escape of Light is Deborah Kahan Kolb’s second chapbook of poetry. She is the recipient of several awards, for both her poetry and her essays. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications. Her artistic voice arises from her upbringing within the insular world of Hassidic Judaism, and a well-developed (and keen) sensibility for the human condition. Much of the work in Escape of Light focuses on aspects of womanhood, relationship, growth and emergence. Her wit and artistry are intertwined in sometimes complex, sometimes heartbreakingly innocent, poems that explore as they expose…
Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker Review by Lara Lillibridge Cristina Rivera Garza is an award-winning writer, poet, translator, and critic. She is the recipient of the Roger Caillois and Anna Seghers Prizes, and the only two-time winner of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. She is currently distinguished professor of Hispanic studies at the University of Houston. Sarah Booker is a Spanish-to-English translator and PhD candidate at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research revolves around contemporary Latin American narratives and translation studies. This book is an act…
Review by Tasslyn Magnusson I’m a fan of poetic forms. Haiku. Sonnet. Pantoum. The elusive sestina. I think there is something magical that happens when a poet jumps into a scaffolding. The scaffolding lifts us, readers and author, to unique connections and dramatic conclusions. Which makes Alice in Ruby Slippers, a collection of poems by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas, an unexpected adventure. The mixing of tales in its titles signifies we’re going on a journey of what we think – on entirely new and independent paths, devised by Grellas, just as she’s modifying the poetic forms to suit her…
Review by Jamie Wendt Award-winning writer Amy M. Clark centers the poems in her new stunning collection, Roundabout, on both the turbulence and the joys of motherhood. Roundabout is rooted in the ways that memory and childhood impact the speaker’s desire to save her son from life’s dangers. Divided into four untitled sections, the book roughly moves chronologically, but memory always seeps into the moment that Clark is dissecting, just as it does in real life. Clark begins by highlighting the constant worries a mother feels, ranging from how to soothe a crying baby to the heightened risks of…