MER Bookshelf April 2024   Books of poetry, memoir, fiction, short stories, and an anthology on our radar…..   Sarah Ghazal Ali, Theophanies. Alice James Books, 2024. (poetry).  Moving between the scriptures of the Qur’an and the Bible, the poems in Sarah Ghazal Ali’s debut, Theophanies, explore the complexities and spectacles of gender, faith, and family by unraveling the age-old idea that seeing is believing. Matriarchs Sarai and Hajar come to life in these pages, which are also interspersed with the speaker’s own experiences of motherhood and womanhood. Theophanies ..read more

MER 22 is Launching! Our latest issue, themed Ages/Stages, is launching 4/24/24. Preorders going on now–with a coupon code for our community (you!) Order your copy here: Print Issue – $18($15 with coupon code “STAGES”) PDF Copy – $5   MER – MOM EGG REVIEW Vol. 22 – 2024  Ages/Stages Poetry – Fiction – Creative Prose – Art Editor-in-Chief Marjorie Tesser Poetry Editors Jennifer Martelli Cindy Veach Prose Co-Editor J.L. Scott Contributors: Kelli Russell Agodon, Kathleen Aguero, Lisa Allen,  Nadia Arioli, Prudence Baird, Tina Barry, Francesca Bell, Laurel Benjamin, Neelam Bhoja ..read more

Review by Jessy Randall   I first encountered the work of Erin Malone when I was on a badly-managed, amateurish, truly terrible three-person judging panel for a chapbook contest that no longer exists. Malone’s manuscript was, in my opinion, the clear winner. I thought the judges’ meeting would be quick and decisive. Well, it wasn’t. I was the only person who brought written notes to the meeting; the other two judges (let’s call them A and B) relied upon their memories. I now suspect that judge A confused Malone’s manuscript with another, and that judge B, through a lack of organization, h ..read more

Review by Ruth Hoberman   Marjorie Maddox’s most recent book, In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, is a (mostly) joyous celebration of prickly, eccentric visions.  In 2018, Maddox tells us, she and her daughter, Anna Lee Hafer, a visual artist, drove three hours to Baltimore to visit that city’s American Visionary Art Museum.  Some of the works they admired there—by Margaret Munz-Losch, Antar Mikosz, Ingo Swann, Christian Twamley, and Greg Mort—appear in Maddox’s book, as do Hafer’s own paintings, and two photographs by Karen Elias: each is paired with a poem Maddox wrote in res ..read more

Rue Matthiessen Castles & Ruins—A Challenging Narrative.   When I undertook to return to Ireland with my young family to try to find a castle called Annaghkeen, that I had lived near to as a child, I certainly did not have a book in mind. My mother had died forty years before, leaving a beautiful, personal chronicle of our summer there. It was called Annaghkeen, after the castle. My father was still living, and sometimes we talked about that summer, how we had to row from our small island to the landing and our car, to just get groceries or make a phone call, and how far away from Ne ..read more

Eileen Cleary Leaves & Blooms   Soon, April. And those of us who’d frozen our fingers clothespinning children’s outfits into brightly colored popsicles, or who’d shoveled snow just before the town’s plow pushed the icy streets onto our driveways, or who’d spilt the golden retriever’s ashes we’d agreed none of us would scatter until spring when all of us could gather, blink away lopsided snowmen blinded by hungry does. We notice the neighbors drag away electric deer who’ve glared through our windows for so long that our rescue puppy no longer interrogates them. We cannot help but recal ..read more

Review by Lara Lillibridge   Castles and Ruins is a quiet, ruminative memoir shifting between the narrator’s year in Ireland as a child and her return years later as an adult with her husband and six-year-old son.  Rue’s father, Peter Matthiessen, was a celebrated writer, the author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord, and repeated winner of the National Book Award.  “His relationship was closest to whatever he was writing at the time, and his family was always second to that.” She clarifies this description, describing him as: … patrician and liberal, icy and warm, remote and ..read more

Review by Christina Kelly   This quietly searing collection of poems by Ann E. Wallace documents the confusion, pain and terror of the Covid pandemic, beginning when she first became severely ill in March 2020. Wallace, the 2023-24 Poet Laureate of Jersey City and Professor of English at New Jersey City University, has written an at times daily account of the three years that she and her two teenage daughters fought long COVID. In a clear and unpretentious style, she shares the struggle of recovering while also caring for suffering daughters, whose coughs are constant and dry. The book is ..read more

Review by Jane Ward   On the first day of first grade, my daughter and I walked into a room decorated by her new teacher with the usual lively trimmings: a colorful reading area rug, labeled cubbies for puzzles and books and art supplies, and number and alphabet letter banners running along all four walls. She also had hung from the ceiling a sign so big it couldn’t be missed. The sign read, Change Is Constant And Necessary–a message that guaranteed that each school day that year would be different and at times challenging, and in its way provided a gentle reminder that life going forwar ..read more

Review by Ellen Meeropol   When the reader first meets Mia, she is trying to find her bra. “I live in my car,” she tells us, “and I only have one bra. It has to be around here somewhere. I don’t like to sleep with the bra on. It’s a little scratchy. For those of you who have never worn a bra, let me be honest, you aren’t missing much” (1). Mia’s voice captivated me from her first words. A homeless young woman living in Los Angeles, we meet her in February 2020, just as the pandemic is about to disrupt her already shaky existence. She lives in her car, attends community college, and cleans ..read more