Stateside: Poems

Although the poems in Stateside are concerned with a military husband's deployment, 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 own life through the long history of military wives left to wait and wonder, invoking Penelope's plight in The Odyssey as a model but also as a source of mystery. These poems are dazzling in their use of form, their sensual imagery, and their learnedness, possessing 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.