The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 33rd edition of this collaboration in which scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic 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 Art by Charlotte Morrison Morrison shows nine images which combined become a chronological visual story of her developing art practice – from conception…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Christine Stewart-Nuñez Before I opened Monica A. Hand’s DiVida to review it, I felt a particular responsibility; Alice James Books published this collection posthumously. Poets work hard to promote their work, and in this regard, DiVida seemed an orphan in need. Reading it deepened my commitment but for a different reason; these poems stunned me to the core. DiVida needs to be read, celebrated, and sung from the rooftops. It’s not accidental that Whitman’s words bubbled up in my first attempt to describe this amazing book. While there’s nothing barbaric or yawpish about DiVida, Hand’s work is…
Review by Judy Swann With its polyvalent title, Paige Riehl’s Suspension is the perfect hierophant for an exploration of the bridges between the self and the world. Many of the poems are about an international adoption, itself an image of nesting/nestling a poet-mother’s experiences into the loving act of parenting. The threads hang together, suspended like an oriole’s nest in which the children thrive. Then there’s the chemical sense of “suspension,” where undissolved particles of one thing are dispersed throughout another—truly the farrago of my life…yours too? And let’s not forget “suspension” as a stoppage or temporary withholding—not just as…
Review by Meghan O’Neill Jendi Reiter’s debut short story collection, An Incomplete List of My Wishes, is a model of tension. The push and pull of one’s own sexuality, family relationships or friends and enemies, but most poignantly the tension between what is said and not said. “Taking advantage of what she now knew to be her invisibility, her inconsequential being, Carla wove among the clusters of cocktail drinkers…” (88). The characters in each of Reiter’s stories are united in their own perceived inconsequence. It is the reader who draws the through-line, who sees the need or misunderstandings in each,…
MER VOX Quarterly – Fall 2018 Tina Barry – The Virginia Project The Virginia Project is a collaboration between poet Tina Barry and several visual artists. In 2014, when Tina Barry moved from Brooklyn to High Falls, she learned that the artist Marc Chagall and his partner Virginia Haggard had made a similar move to the town in 1946. After some research, Barry started writing prose poems in the voices of [Chagall’s lover Virginia] Haggard, and her five-year-old daughter Jean McNeil. Visual artists show work in response to the poems. ARTISTS Lori van Houten – White Flannel Amy Talluto – High Falls Giselle Potter – Circus Heige Kim –…
TINA BARRY – THE VIRGINIA PROJECT The following images and poems are part of a collaborative written word and visual art exhibition entitled The Virginia Project, which will be presented at The Wired Gallery in High Falls, New York, from 10/27/18-11/25/18. In 2014, when Tina Barry moved from Brooklyn to High Falls, she learned that the artist Marc Chagall and his partner Virginia Haggard had made a similar move to the town in 1946. After some research, Barry started writing prose poems in the voices of [Chagall’s lover Virginia] Haggard, and her five-year-old daughter Jean McNeil. Represented here are…
White Flannel Marc’s head blurs above mine. I pull my hips up, wrap my legs tight. Now he whimpers in his sleep. Marc, I say, shaking him. Marc. His eyes are in some bleak country when he slams his fist in my face. He’s awake now, rushing back to himself. He wants to explain. To tell me what horrors he’s relived. But I hold up my hand. Something has closed inside me. Later, while he snores, I dream of embroidering his face on white flannel. Careful black stitches edge the long nose. I color his lips vermillion. Two…
High Falls The real estate agent wore a fedora, smashed almost flat, a cartoon hat too small for his head. He advertised the quality of his coat with a label sewn near the cuff of one sleeve: 100 percent wool. Beneath it, a shirt stretched so far the buttons barely held; I could have rested my hand on the balloon of his belly. With the windows open, light poured in, a pure yellow Catskill’s light Marc would have loved. We drove from Wallkill, to Bethel, Warwick and Mt Hope. We drove to Kingston, Cottekill, Olive Bridge and Accord. None of…
Circus After the measles stopped scratching my teacher Mrs. Schwartz takes me to the Barnum and Bailey’s Circus She takes Me none of the other girls This is my first circus I am so tired because I couldn’t sleep Mrs. Schwartz drives and sings Frére Jacques and then we both sing Frére Jacques A woman drives next to us and smiles I move close to Mrs. Schwartz I want the woman to think I am Mrs. Schwartz’s daughter When we get there two clowns are smoking cigarettes outside One sees me and squeezes his big red nose Behind…
So I Came From the Sea and Sat Down Pretend I’m a slender whale, an odalisque along the shoreline. Stud one arm with stars. Let your eyes travel the full gleam of my tail. What do you carry? A line-drawing etched on ultramarine? A harmonica playing lilies? Unfurl Jean’s fingers. She offers a stack of wishes. In my palm, I hold a smaller hand. A branch of coral on the lifeline. Tina Barry So I Came From the Sea and Sat Down (after Tina Barry’s poem) 2018 Watercolor and casein on paper 30 5/8 x 37 5/8…