Reflections on At the Gate: Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 by Lucille Clifton by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Lucille Clifton always reminds me of things I need to remember. I’ve written often about how when I was a new mother a photo of Clifton reminded me to discard any remnants of the nonsense I might have internalized about choosing art or motherhood. I still remember, clear as a sunny summer day in Jamaica, Queens, seeing a black and white photo of Clifton surrounded by her six children. I tucked the photo away like a talisman that would guide me—then a mother of…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Sometimes an Island is a short but mighty novel-in-stories that opens with a prologue and brief history of pogroms against Jews in the Russian empire in the early 1900s. The escape of three young men and a girl who settle on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine frames the story. These early refugees will impact future generations who become climate refugees after global warming leads to an extreme weather event called The Undoing in 2029. Part cli-sci, part literary fiction, part parable, these connected stories warn as they weave the reader and in and…
Review by Carla Panciera Jane Ward’s fourth book, Should Have Told You Sooner, is both a journey novel and an exercise in time travel. As one of the novel’s youngest characters wisely observes: “‘We tend to think of life as a straight line until we’re reminded it’s lines that sometimes fold back on themselves or go in circles and figure eights’” (198). That is certainly the case in these pages, where characters not only visit the past, but where they are forced to examine how events from that time that are beyond their control shape their present and their…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Deborah Leipziger, Tell Me, Lily Poetry Review Books, February 2026, poetry Tell Me is a love letter to nature and to daughters, to the Beloved and to our future ancestors. These poems celebrate the poet’s Brazilian identity and her history as a daughter of refugees. The trans poet, Joy Ladin, writes: “A profoundly wise, humane and generous collection, Tell Me constantly generates and celebrates connection: between body and world, art and nature, individual life, and the sweep of often painful history. Overflowing with wisdom, tenderness, and celebration, Tell Me encourages us to recognize that…
Megan Merchant, Author of Hortensia, in winter Interviewed by Melissa Joplin Higley MJH – When and why did you first start writing poems? MM – I was an odd kid and instead of writing diary or journal entries, I wrote poems. Looking back, they are very endearing and hilarious. However, it wasn’t until undergrad that I gravitated toward poetry as an intentional art form. Despite the loud warnings that I could never make a career path from poetry, it was the thing that made me feel the most alive. MJH – Who are your main poetic…
Walking with Beth: Conversations with my hundred-year-old friend by Merilyn Simonds Review by Melanie McGehee Award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, writer of more than twenty books across genres, reached her seventieth birthday with a specific longing: she wanted a guide for the years ahead. In Walking with Beth: Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend, Simonds finds that guide not in a manual, but in a relationship with Elizabeth Pierce Robinson (Beth), a woman three decades older. Merilyn and Beth are acquaintances, both active in the literary and arts culture of Kingston, Ontario, when COVID-19 is in its early days, and Beth…
Unvarnished Animal: A Review of Shari Caplan’s Exhibitionist by Hannah Larrabee In her prize-winning collection, Shari Caplan opens with a poem invoking the incomparable Marina Abramović: Here is the gallery of my body. (…) You’re not supposed to chew the pomegranate seed. This is how I imagine our relationship: You, reader, the mouth opening to all my red beads … (1) You might be familiar with Abramović’s living exhibit at the MoMA—how she couldn’t help but break her stoic gaze when she looked up and saw her former partner, Ulay. Desire is at the heart of Exhibitionist, its clarity…
Review by Emily Hall Nora Lange’s short-story collection, Day Care, is a piercing exploration of womanhood and fulfillment. The follow-up to her debut novel, Us Fools, the eighteen stories in this collection center on women who feel unsatisfied and neglected, despite having partners and/or children. While many writers have explored the hollow promise of domesticity, Lange brings fresh perspective to this, as she illustrates how women use fantasies and daydreams to regain their sense of fulfillment. Although the characters in these stories face mundane challenges, like neglectful partners and overbearing mothers, Lange amplifies the tension by infusing these conflicts…
Review by Suzette Bishop In Dear Letters in the Red Box by Sarah Stern, her fourth poetry book, poems lift off from story, memory, dream, everyday experiences, and a deceivingly plain-spoken language, shapeshifting into something ethereal. Reading through a box of her mother’s papers after her passing spurs Stern to ruminate on what was given to her. Among those gifts she shares with the reader are family stories of endurance, Jewish ancestry, New York City, and how to live intentionally and deeply “in a strange factory of trees and words” (54). Her mother’s poems and love letters between her…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason One of the most difficult parts of becoming a mother—even before a baby is born—is the worrying that never, ever lets up. There are worries during pregnancy that continue if and when the baby is born and then as children grow up. Even adult children cause great worry to their mothers, no matter how well adjusted or happy they may seem. Rebekah Denison Hewitt captures these many emotions in her new poetry collection, Creature in Bloom, which comes out just in time for Mother’s Day this year. Hewitt has mostly called the Midwest home and…