@ Literary Mama
The past three weeks have been full of creative works. Read the most recent pieces at Literary Mama…
COLUMNS
How We Got Here by B.L. Pike from Senior Mama
In a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine, author Marc Fisher questioned Kathy Pezdek, a cognitive psychologist from Claremont Graduate University, about the way memory operates over time. “At the top of the hierarchy of memory is the gist,” Fisher said, “and farther down are the details.” As mom to nine grown children, most of them adopted, and foster mom to a couple dozen more, I am intimately acquainted with the gist; the details, not so much.
LITERARY REFLECTIONS
Minutes Are Just Seconds Aren’t Minutes by Wendy C. Oritz
My daughter just turned sixteen months old and I’ve left her at home and I’m in a library typing this:
Writing Prompt: Minutes Are Just Seconds Aren’t Minutes by Heidi Scrimgeour
In this month’s Literary Reflections essay, Minutes Are Just Seconds Aren’t Minutes, Wendy C. Ortiz writes an arresting account of the impact of motherhood on her writing time…. Submit a 500-word response to this writing prompt by May 15th for feedback from our editors.
Now Reading: April 2013 by Libby Maxey
This month, our editors can point you into the suburbs, or the wilderness, the heart of Paris or the heart of motherhood.
POETRY
Cosmology by Carla Pierce
In star time,
you have already been
parsley turning its curls to the sun
in someone’s backyard garden,
Mom.
Generations by Susan Carter Morgan
Their eyes speak first, these babies of my babies.
Lips, cheeks, sweet smell.
To My Mother, at Fifty by Bethany Tyler Lee
You call to tell me what you cannot have
at your party, what the doctor will condemn:
The Bouquet by Tricia Knoll
We walk my garden together.
The rounds of aggregate form a path
that fit my step, stumble up his.
Mother and Daughter, July 2008 by Cath Mason
Last summer we, your four adult children,
thought we would be burying you before
Christmas, next to dad on one of Colne’s
green hills. So, today I kneel, weeding your soil
My Mother Drove a Race Car by A.J. Huffman
Once. On a dare. In a Powder Puff Derby.
REVIEWS
A Literary Smorgasborg: Five New Books on Food and Family by Katherine J. Barrett
The five books reviewed here explore food and family life through a cornucopia of writing styles, from practical recipes to fanciful fiction, from autobiography to evocative essay. Despite variations in preparation and delivery, these books share two ingredients: compassion and connection.
How to Live: A Review of The Still Point of the Turning World by Melissa Matthewson
I tell you this story because at the time, I had also been reading Emily Rapp’s new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, and while I sat with my children laughing and singing and banging on drums, Emily Rapp was at home caring for her son who was slowly dying from Tay-Sachs disease.