Review by Ivy Rutledge – Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is a refreshing voice in the realm of parenting books and spiritual autobiography. Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting blends…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by Michelle Wilbert – As I completed Atoosa Grey’s organically lush Black Hollyhock, I thought immediately of the nearly platonic ideal evoked by Mary Oliver in “Sometimes”: “Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention. / Be astonished. /…
Review by Judith Swan – When the 19th century’s Anna Laetitia Barbauld addressed the less-than-classical theme of motherhood, the terms “sentiment” and “romanticized” were not the pejoratives they are today. Indeed, the cultivation of sentiment or emotion was a middle class…
Review by Issa M. Lewis – A first-time expectant mother looks for a roadmap as she prepares for her pregnancy, her birth, and her parenting. She asks questions of her friends, her sisters, her own mother; she mines…
Review by Libby Maxey – I’m rather new to the world of small fiction (also known as flash fiction, micro fiction, short shorts, sudden fiction, quick fiction—and there may be more names that I’ve yet to run across). As…
Review by Sarah W. Bartlett – Amy Dryansky’s newest poetry collection, Grass Whistle, was awarded the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. While writing this collection, Dryansky began a blog about the intersection of mother/artist/poet in her own and in other women’s lives. The…
Review by RZ Wiggins – Mothers are simple, complex, opaque, vivid, loving, distant, devoted, and neglectful, all in a lifetime. From its first pages, this slim volume overflows with the above and with a mother’s abundant love and commitment. Rosalie…
Review by Barbara Harroun – Samantha Duncan’s intimate, inventive, and gloriously imaginative chapbook-length poem The Birth Creatures examines and gives new eyes and voice to the post-partum experience. Duncan, the author of the chapbooks One Never Eats Four (ELJ Publications, 2014) and Moon Law (Wild Age…
Review by Kerry Neville – Buffy the Vampire Slayer is deeply ingrained in both popular and academic culture (spin-offs, references, paraphernalia, and the academic journal Slayage). Josh Whedon, the series creator, has explained that he explicitly developed Buffy as a feminist…
Review by Jennifer Martelli – From the opening title poem where we are told, “Never mind what your mother says” (3) to the closing poem “Chained Reaction” where Betts writes The top of my mother’s hand is tan shallot skinand…