Jennifer Militello
Books
winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Prize
"Jennifer Militello’s Flinch of Song simply astounds. More than a collection of poems, the book is an orchestral piece where the elaborate musicality of language coaxes meaning into its fragile existence…Its cadences, pacing, sound symbolism, and imagery lead the beguiled reader into interior spaces which are previouslyunknown yet at the same time strangely familiar."
--Christina Cook, Poets' Quarterly
"Jennifer Militello['s] Flinch of Song is a discovery. For Militello, things are always something else. A parade of metaphors reveals Militello as a storehouse of fitting and extraordinary conjugations. This is a book of things, and Militello favors nouns commonly associated with beauty—flowers, rivers, light, horses. But these become uncommon, imbued with a sense of raggedness. These nouns are spoken with a laborious urgency. As such, when Militello writes, 'I broke my throat with // trying to say,' she is believed."
--Janelle Adsit, ForeWord Magazine
"'Shipyard, shipyard, why aren't I home?/ Even when you give me one, it travels.' Luscious verbal texturing and lyric slipperiness give Jennifer Militello's chapbook, Anchor Chain, Open Sail, a sensuality and braininess akin to modern dance. Dickinson is her poetic ancestor; Szporluk, her cousin. Enclosed here are surprising and mysterious messages, urgently uttered, and well worth listening for."
--Kathy Fagan, author of The Charm
"Jennifer Militello makes her way through an incomplete world and comes out with testaments to the elegance found in all that is missing, declaring that 'there is a hinge here, broken/and fixed, pinned through vacancy's fist.' Where many would find a trail of laments, she sees a celebration in progress. What sets these poems apart is that they are not songs of praise so much as the distant humming of someone who gathers, from 'the sacred chore of wanting to die,' the precise words for the long mending ritual."
--Dionisio D. Martinez
Best New Poets 2008
"[One] comes to realize that the adjectives 'new' and 'emerging' are mere technicalities in this instance. Although none of the poets included here have published a full-length book of poetry, many are MFA students or graduates, and chapbook authors, and most have already seen some of their poems published in the most renowned and exclusive journals in North America.... The result is a remarkably diverse mix of poems." - BookPleasures
"It's a nervy thing for an anthology to label itself Best New Poets, but once again this collection lives up to its name. It's a rich and readable selection, reflecting no party-line aesthetic, and attesting to the formidable promise of the emerging generation." - David Wojahn
