Click HERE to buy The Queen of Queens now!
As its intriguing title suggests, The Queen of Queens places royalty alongside the commonplace, parallels contemporary and retrospective, juxtaposes fine with rough. In these unswerving poems, the drugs, pop music, and rocket crash that defined the 80’s eerily evoke our era of Trump. The book’s speaker laments, “I fear no one / will ever hear me,” and Martelli’s “queens”—from Geraldine Ferraro to Madonna, Nancy Pelosi to Molly Ringwald—embody the collection’s resistance against gender oppression, political sexism, and ongoing threats to reproductive rights, while reminding us that one strong woman can lift us all. This is a powerful account of past and present, strung like the book’s frequently recurring pearls—symbol of femininity but also proof that a source of struggle can generate uncommon beauty. I will return to these translucent poems again and again. Jennifer Militello, author of The Pact
In long, powerful lines that don’t sacrifice any of their music, Jennifer Martelli thrusts us back into the mid-80s when the Italian-American speaker is coming of age in college as the first woman (also an Italian-American) is nominated for Vice-President of the United States. These poems are both beautiful and brutal, artful and angry, finely-crafted and fierce. Each poem proves the personal is political and that the same concerns about equity for women that were prevalent forty years ago are just as crucial today. In a magical sleight of hand, Queen of Queens captures both optimism and disappointment, the progress that had been made and the ways we have plateaued. In complex, intelligent poems that are not afraid to grapple with difficult topics, including misogynist rhetoric from other women, Martelli has answered her own question, "how do we survive sadness?” Martelli writes about it—all the secrets and mistakes. All the false hopes and struggles. She makes bold art from history and we, her readers, are the wiser for it. Jennifer Franklin, author of No Small Gift
In long, powerful lines that don’t sacrifice any of their music, Jennifer Martelli thrusts us back into the mid-80s when the Italian-American speaker is coming of age in college as the first woman (also an Italian-American) is nominated for Vice-President of the United States. These poems are both beautiful and brutal, artful and angry, finely-crafted and fierce. Each poem proves the personal is political and that the same concerns about equity for women that were prevalent forty years ago are just as crucial today. In a magical sleight of hand, Queen of Queens captures both optimism and disappointment, the progress that had been made and the ways we have plateaued. In complex, intelligent poems that are not afraid to grapple with difficult topics, including misogynist rhetoric from other women, Martelli has answered her own question, "how do we survive sadness?” Martelli writes about it—all the secrets and mistakes. All the false hopes and struggles. She makes bold art from history and we, her readers, are the wiser for it. Jennifer Franklin, author of No Small Gift
Click HERE to buy My Tarantella now!
Named a "Must Read Book" by the Massachusetts Center for the Book
Awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian American Studies Association
Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award
"I love this book with its strength and riskiness, its weaving of the Kitty Genovese story with the narrator’s own story and life. The details Martelli provides seem so real, so rooted, so perfect for these two intertwined tales . . . This is a book I won’t soon forget. Certainly, it’s a book not to be missed."
~ Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award winner
"Rarely have a I read a collection as thoroughly haunted and haunting as Jennifer Martelli’s My Tarantella, its hanging globe lamps dimming in the jewel-toned aftermaths of neighbor- hoods where the speaker’s Italian upbringing melds into har- rowing song for Kitty Genovese and those women violated by the preying mantises of this too-often violent world. Martelli writes, “This is how the Queen of the Night tulips topple: first, their lips / let loose the dark petals: // they puddled like a silk gown.” This collection shines its eerie and gorgeous light, filling the shadows with tarot readings for Genovese, artichoke leaves hiding secret gifts, and a whole history recast from the shimmering margins. This collection is so painfully exquisite, “It hurts my hoarse throat, my blue heart.”
~ Jenn Givhan, author of Girl with Death Mask
Awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian American Studies Association
Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award
"I love this book with its strength and riskiness, its weaving of the Kitty Genovese story with the narrator’s own story and life. The details Martelli provides seem so real, so rooted, so perfect for these two intertwined tales . . . This is a book I won’t soon forget. Certainly, it’s a book not to be missed."
~ Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award winner
"Rarely have a I read a collection as thoroughly haunted and haunting as Jennifer Martelli’s My Tarantella, its hanging globe lamps dimming in the jewel-toned aftermaths of neighbor- hoods where the speaker’s Italian upbringing melds into har- rowing song for Kitty Genovese and those women violated by the preying mantises of this too-often violent world. Martelli writes, “This is how the Queen of the Night tulips topple: first, their lips / let loose the dark petals: // they puddled like a silk gown.” This collection shines its eerie and gorgeous light, filling the shadows with tarot readings for Genovese, artichoke leaves hiding secret gifts, and a whole history recast from the shimmering margins. This collection is so painfully exquisite, “It hurts my hoarse throat, my blue heart.”
~ Jenn Givhan, author of Girl with Death Mask
"Jennifer Martelli's poems in The Uncanny Valley are apertures into a woozy, lonely landscape of dislocated relationships and obsession. Like the many sparrows that flit through the collection, these poems 'flew in one fractured thought, a point of view/ from bad loci.' From Catholicism, gephyrophobia, shame, and desire. Martelli's restrained females are all eyes, compulsively staring at and shredding the grace of life and the shock and banality of death. We can't stop staring, either, at her gorgeously wrought language which ushers us to the brink of raw intimacy."
~ Jennifer Jean, The Fool
"Jennifer Martelli's first full-length collection, The Uncanny Valley, is a soulful collection that disrupts the head and the heart. Powerful as a thunderclap, these poems have grit, an undeniable doggedness in their examination of family, religion, gender, sex, and place. Her poems are unflinching in their exploration of boundaries: dark to light and the all-encompassing gray. With sly wit and sharp language, this is where Martelli's poems live. We must listen to this brave, new voice."
~ January Gill O'Neil, Underlife and Misery Islands
"Jennifer Martelli's tightly focused poems invite us into an imperfect world defined by her rich personal history. This is a place she knows well, one that is continually reinvented by the people who are its fabric. Once within these walls we find that the struggle is real and the poet who guides us (with her frailty and her honesty) is above all else a wise observer."
~ Kevin Carey, The One Fifteen to Penn Station and Jesus Was a Homeboy
~ Jennifer Jean, The Fool
"Jennifer Martelli's first full-length collection, The Uncanny Valley, is a soulful collection that disrupts the head and the heart. Powerful as a thunderclap, these poems have grit, an undeniable doggedness in their examination of family, religion, gender, sex, and place. Her poems are unflinching in their exploration of boundaries: dark to light and the all-encompassing gray. With sly wit and sharp language, this is where Martelli's poems live. We must listen to this brave, new voice."
~ January Gill O'Neil, Underlife and Misery Islands
"Jennifer Martelli's tightly focused poems invite us into an imperfect world defined by her rich personal history. This is a place she knows well, one that is continually reinvented by the people who are its fabric. Once within these walls we find that the struggle is real and the poet who guides us (with her frailty and her honesty) is above all else a wise observer."
~ Kevin Carey, The One Fifteen to Penn Station and Jesus Was a Homeboy
Click HERE to buy In The Year of Ferraro now!
All of the finalist manuscripts for the 2016/2017 “Season” Open Reading were read by both Ann Dernier and me, and our findings were much the same. This year’s “winner” is Jennifer Martelli and her awesome chapbook, After Bird.
~ Grey Book Presss
~ Grey Book Presss