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Tupelo Press, 2021
If you are someone like me who usually – but not always – closes her correspondence to friends and family with the word “love,” Jennifer Militello’s “The Pact” (Tupelo Press) might make you want to think about what it means when you use – or withhold – that word. For the Militello in this, her fifth poetry collection, the language of love feels oxymoronic, characterized by violence, fierce ironies and impossible obligations, conditions very far from any religious, philosophical or even secular ideals. Intimate relationships are the main subjects for the book and her relationship poems refuse to console or reward the reader with last minute aesthetic or emotional escapes from their pessimistic views of human nature; this refusal provides a welcome relief from poems that seek to provide conventional affirmations or resignations when addressing the incongruities of love. Militello’s signature wrenched and wrenching metaphors – stunningly origina