A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments

by Jennifer Militello

Overview

In her third full-length collection of poems, Jennifer Militello weaves fragmentary letters addressing illness and struggle through ventriloquisms of mythological heroes and dead composers, ancient goddesses and murdered girls. Stylized “dictionaries” open into lay-ered definitions meant like magical clothing or tutelary amulets to provide shelter from a world that cannot be controlled. As the poet stitches together a plethoric identity to ex-plore disguises, A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments casts a smokescreen of selves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936797752
Publisher:	Tupelo Press
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Militello is the author of three poetry collections published by Tupelo Press: FLINCH OF SONG (2009), winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award, BODY THESAURUS (2013), named a finalist for the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award by Marilyn Hacker, and A CAMOUFLAGE OF SPECIMENS AND GARMENTS (2016). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The North American Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Best New Poets 2008. She is also the author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail.

Table of Contents

Dear B, /3
Song of Interrogation / 7
A Dictionary of the Garment /8
A Dictionary at the Periphery /10
A Dictionary of Having Been Prey in the Voice of the Grandmother /12
A Dictionary of Preserving the Hydrangea's Bloom /14
A Dictionary of the Symphony in the Voice of Ludwig van Beethoven /15
A Dictionary with Foresight as 20/20 /16
A Dictionary of Venery in the Voice of Artemis /18
A Dictionary of Faith /19
A Dictionary of Following and Fading in the Voice of Eurydice /20
A Gospel of the Human Condition /21
Dear B, /25
Dear B, /26
Dear B, /27
Corrosion Therapy / 31
Criminal How-To /32
A Dictionary of Wooing and Deception in the Voice of the Sociopath /34
A Dictionary of What Can Be Learned in the Voice of the Sociopath's Lover /36
Conspiracy to Commit Larceny: A Recipe /37
Conspiracy to Commit Larceny /38
A Dictionary of Mechanics, Memory, and Skin in the Voice of Marion Parker /39
A Letter to the Coroner in the Voice of Marion Parker /40
A Dictionary of Keeping Quiet between the Monstrous and Holy in the Voice of Marion Parker /41
Working with the Instrument /43
Dear B, /47
Dear B, /48
Dear B, /49
A Dictionary at the Turn of the Millennium / 53
A Dictionary of Almost Drowning / 54
A Dictionary of Limbo /55
A Dictionary of Resignation /57
A Dictionary of Filming the Inside of a Tornado /58
A Dictionary of Sun and Sea in the Voice of Icarus /59
A Dictionary in the Voice of Icarus /60
A Dictionary of Wandering and Homesickness in the Voice of Odusseus /67
A Dictionary Measuring Cause and Effect / 62
A Dictionary of Feigning Survival /63
A Dictionary of the Dead in the Voice of the Living Collective /61
A Dictionary of Perishing /65
A Dictionary of the Afterlife /66
Dear B, /69
Notes /71
Acknowledgments /73

Editorial Reviews

09/05/2016
Through haunting language and metaphor, Militello (Body Thesaurus) conjures a third collection that operates as a disturbing representation of mental anguish as it spills into violence. In poems grouped as "songs," "dictionaries," or epistles addressed to B, a sequence of speakers meditate on familiar yet foreign images: Red Riding Hood's grandmother recalls being ravished by the wolf, Artemis lies in wait for prey, Icarus mourns his wings, and Odysseus longs for home. "A Dictionary of the Symphony in the Voice of Ludwig van Beethoven" depicts Beethoven beset by a looming predatory presence that "will fling you over its shoulder tarnish you turn you into a schoolboy." Meanwhile, the person writing to B clings to sanity in a "black trance" where "All I know to hold onto slips. A stitched thread to control each buttonhole's abyss." Poems in the voice of teenage murder victim Marion Parker may be too morbid for some readers, and. Militello's language can be melodramatic or precious ("My heart filled with villanelles of longing"). But the collection is largely an exquisite example of the modern gothic: shadowy, beset by menacing weather and violent feelings, and positively bewitching. When Militello writes "I want to be anesthesia sly inside the patient,/ counting down to knock her out," she describes and demonstrates her own ingenuity at its best. (May)

Publishers Weekly