Book review: Brown Girl Dreaming

How did I not know that Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming was a book in verse?! Highly awarded, this memoir (in verse!) describes the author’s childhood in the 1960’s and ’70s in Iowa, South Carolina, and Brooklyn. Woodson paints portraits of places and people with spare-yet-lush poetic language. Each poem could stand alone, some moreso…Continue reading Book review: Brown Girl Dreaming

Happy National Poetry Month!

We’re celebrating at Literary Mama! Five fresh poems contemplate the writer’s life, from creating our own language, watching our children make their mark, to reimagining a poetic (and cultural) icon.  This group speaks to my heart; I am always partial to writing about writing. Alphabet for the Stay-at-Home Parent by Jennifer O’Grady The body’s deepest…Continue reading Happy National Poetry Month!

Got poems? Submit!

Literary Mama’s Poetry department is once again accepting submissions! After a February in which we caught up, we are now ready to read poems from March 1 to June 1. Our submission guidelines give an idea of what we’re looking for. In a nutshell: We publish poetry that has some element of the unexpected–whether it’s the…Continue reading Got poems? Submit!

Poems to love

This February’s poetry on Literary Mama seeks the sublime in the everyday. In “A Good Day,” Heather Taylor Johnson asks, “Are you aware outside the sun yawns?” Ashleigh Brown explains in “Cold Coffee” that “A woman drinks cold coffee because / the daily prayers of tangled laundry and crumpled homework are / sacred.”

January issue of Literary Mama

Attention parents of boys: January’s poems, published in Literary Mama today, feature stages of raising sons, from Julie Stotz-Ghosh showing her infant his First Snow to Rebecca Lanning speaking To My Son on the Morning of his Scholastic Aptitude Test. From toy trains to Bottlecaps, the relationship mothers share with sons as they grow into men…Continue reading January issue of Literary Mama