“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
The Uncanny Valley
“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 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