3/29/2010
Triquarterly
6.125 x 8.5, 72 pp.
Trade Paper
ISBN 0-8101-5214-2 / $16.95
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Stateside
Poems
Jehanne Dubrow
Although the poems in Stateside are concerned with a husband’s deployment to the war in Iraq, Jehanne Dubrow’s riveting collection is driven more by intellectual curiosity and emotional exploration than by any overt political agenda. The speaker in these poems attempts to understand her situation within the long history of military wives left to wait and wonder – Penelope is a model, but also a source of mystery. These poems are dazzling in their use of form, their sensual imagery, and their learnedness, and possess a level of subtlety and control rarely found in the work of a young poet. Dubrow is fearless in her contemplation of the far-reaching effects of war, but even more so in her excavation of a marriage under duress.
In Jehanne Dubrow’s Stateside, the formalities of structure—rhyme and meter—play against the formalities imposed upon the life of a military wife. there are poems in marching meters and poems that provide counterpoint to those rhythms, but most of all, hers is a fully experienced suite, fully composed in every sense of that word, both intimate and public, an accomplished book. she is a contemporary Penelope whose tale is epic. —sam hamill, author of Almost Paradise: Selected Poems & Translations (2005)
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