Flinch of Song

Winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award, Jennifer Militello's poems are of a piece with that movement that the late Reginald Shepherd calls lyric postmodernism. Her work is indeed lyrical, deeply thoughtful, and filled with associative leaps so astonishing and agile that one is dazzled by the imagination at work at every line break. The poems grapple with what is simultaneously large and small about the human condition: the everyday dramas of family and of love.

From A Thunderstorm Reminds Me of My Convictions:

Its blue cathedral is trembling into the marrowof my mouth. Its sharp houses split open

every string, then still into the trottingof rain. I live with unburied bones

that brown instead of bleaching

. . .

If I bear a daughter she will not find meamong low ceilings and half-black veils.

Each of my heartbeats unlocks an asylum.There is good hunting. There is terrible joy.

Jennifer Militello is the author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail (Finishing Line Press, 2006) and has published widely in the top journals, including Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The North American Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Verse, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Writers at Work, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Poetry. Winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award, Jennifer Militello's poems are lyrical, deeply thoughtful, and laced with associative leaps so surprising that a reader will be exhilarated by the imagination at work (and play) in each poem. The poems grapple with the everyday dramas of family and of love and do so with an avidity of intelligence as bracing as lines from Lorca or Rimbaud.

Author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail (Finishing Line Press, 2006) and widely published in journals, including DENVER QUARTERLY, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The North American Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Verse, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, Jennifer Militello has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Writers at Work, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She lives in New Hampshire and teaches at River Valley Community College. Jennifer Militello was named a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's 2010 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award.