Nov 20, 2013
1 Min read time
Share:
A collection that moves past the body versus mind duality.
Body Thesaurus
by Jennifer Militello
Tupelo Press, $16.95 (paper)
Jennifer Militello’s Body Thesaurus begins with a passage from Dylan Thomas: “I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels.” It is an apt point of entry for an exploration of the struggle between an individual’s inner life and her experiences of the uncontrollable exterior world. But Militello goes beyond this persistent duality and the perennial empiricist debate of body versus mind. Her poems are paradoxical lyrics—disorienting syntax mixes parts of speech to create strange and uneven shifts of sound and meaning. Bridging and muddling the disconnects between body and world, she writes: “I am rich with different versions / of myself, and I do not know an antidote for me.” Her speakers trudge through circumstance, confronting the futility, fleetingness, and finalities of everyday life. Challenged by illness, sick with language, the body throughout the book becomes a ravaged landscape: “in a world / where nothing is clear, the world is a wound.” Militello explores the irreconcilable collision of body, psyche, and language when none are working as they should. The systematic form of the book—six sections announced by analytical statements that are subsequently navigated and subverted: “The self is not a symptom,” “The self is not a battery of tests,” “The self is not a cure”—sets us in the cold reality of scientific process, but it is a reality where boundaries between psychic interior and clinical exterior no longer hold.
While we have you...
...we need your help. You might have noticed the absence of paywalls at Boston Review. We are committed to staying free for all our readers. Now we are going one step further to become completely ad-free. This means you will always be able to read us without roadblocks or barriers to entry. It also means that we count on you, our readers, for support. If you like what you read here, help us keep it free for everyone by making a donation. No amount is too small. You will be helping us cultivate a public sphere that honors pluralism of thought for a diverse and discerning public.
November 20, 2013
1 Min read time
