Breaking the Code of Dots and Dashes
by Kim Bridgford
Dots and Dashes: Poems by Jehanne Dubrow, winner of the Open Series Award,
Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Southern Illinois University Press, 2017,
paper, 76 pages.
ots and Dashes by Jehanne Dubrow, about poetry and the military,
emphasizes that disciplines have their own language. Dubrow, who is married
to a naval officer, attempts, in the way of all good poets, to cross from
one language to another, from the life of the artist, to the life of her
military husband. People do try to understand one another, even if
languages are opposed: but at one point or another, the analogy breaks
down. As the formal poet and professional violinist Kate Light once
emphasized when people used a musical comparison to illustrate a point in
poetry: they are useful in comparison, but they are not the same. Dubrow
and her husband are like all couples who have different interests or
careers. They find a way to manage the scenario, although in their long
separations and chosen professions, they are more extreme than many others.
I was reminded of this opposition recently, in hearing Dubrow read "From
the Pentagon" at the Poetry by the Sea Conference, comparing chocolates to
weapons of war. Of course, this is not a new concept, to have celebratory
chocolates in honor of an occasion, but there is something unsettling about
"a drone / unmanned and filled with hazelnut praline. / He brings me cocoa
powder, like chocolate blown / to bits" (6-9). Many people love chocolate,
and some can overindulge. How interesting, then, that this chocolate not
only stands for war, but in another context can literally blow a person up.
At the same time, Dubrow and her husband both have tattoos, they are
detail/texture oriented, and they are filled with longing. These general
but interesting links—particularly the latter two—are emphasized in
Dubrow's poem "The Long Deployment," which has also been made into a short
film by Motionpoems. An irony about this interpretation of the poem is that
a filmic sensibility gets to participate in the trading off of languages as
well. "There's bitter incense paired with something sweet," writes Dubrow.
"And then he's gone" (21-22). What I remember about this film is its
eroticism: very much a third creation, outside the couple. Additionally,
this poem is part of a volume called The Book of Scented Things, which uses
scent as a lens and underscores the level at which, down to a whiff of
pepper, Dubrow understands and misses her husband.
How to get to know the absent husband? The most common trope is the story
of Penelope weaving and unweaving her tapestry each night, but this
contemporary story is more practical. By his bedroom drawer? The
contents—from condoms to correspondence—seem no different from most
people's bedroom drawers. Yet in "A Catalogue of the Contents from His
Nightstand" Dubrow makes us believe that the end of this list sonnet
reveals the link between them: "A tiny light / he aimed at shadows as we
lay in bed / (bright spheres) until the battery went dead" (12-14). Her
firmest beliefs are the points at which the practical becomes magical in
their connection.
We tend to gravitate to our own kind within our groups, and so one of the
most fascinating poems in the collection is "Cadets Read Howl." They may
be an unlikely physical group to read the poem, "shaved-to-bone, heads
bare" (1), given our understanding of the Beat Poets and their aesthetic,
and yet it is these crossings that alert us, "like a text that won't give
up its meaning" (14). Poets enter here.
Just as the cadets can wander into Howl, so, too, can Dubrow wander into
Ronald Reagan landscapes on the military side. "Is everything Ronald
Reagan?" she somewhat sardonically asks her husband, from an aircraft
carrier, to an airport ("USS Ronald Reagan"). It certainly seems so. And
who from a more leftist viewpoint, Dubrow thinks, wants to be in that
landscape anyway? At one point Dubrow would have said "no one." Yet, given
differently niched realities, Dubrow wants to go along with the absurdity
of this premise now, in this disguised sestina:
all is quiet on the Ronald Reagan—
and how I'll want to believe, although Reagan
could never persuade me that America
was steering toward a flat horizon. (30-33)
Is it "just" to believe in Ronald Reagan if it means bringing a husband
home? Is this what real life is like?
In her poem "What We Talk About When We Talk About Deployment," Dubrow
reveals that, even among partners going through the waiting experience, the
answer is different. Dubrow bluntly points out a truism: that "deployment
is like misfortune—you only care when it's your own" (19). Other military
wives have additional ways of defining and carrying on: "I can see the
separate narratives our mouths have formed. I can see how we keep trying to
change the subject—what about the weather, we say, what about the lonely
shadows of the afternoon, how when we speak of it, December almost seems to
disappear" (19). As Dubrow goes on to write in "The Signal Flag," "If only
marriage came equipped with signs / as manifest" (9-10). That is the crux
of the book.
Two other pieces stand out in the collection: "POEM" and "A Row of
Ribbons." Each one is a clever way of understanding the world through one
of the two languages under discussion. It would seem that "POEM" would be
the poet's language, but it is "Personal Observation Encased in Metaphor"
(2), as the government uses acronyms to communicate. In another life, I
worked as a military historian for the federal government. Although this
poem serves a clear argumentative purpose in the book, it is not the best
argument for the military as a whole. Perhaps it recalls what I was told
when I wrote military history: that military history is best when it says
something not quite clear. The better argument for the military is "A Row
of Ribbons," where each ribbon has a purpose and a function. As Dubrow
writes,
To us they're only rules
and bars of color,
each one a regulated streak
of a body belonging
to a greater one.
But ask my husband,
and he'll point to awards
on his chest, which are
to him an ocean. (19-27)
As Dubrow clarifies later, "they don't bend / to fit the wearer, / who is
after all, part / of a vessel" (48-51) …."every sacrifice already /
knows its place" (56-57). These poems suggest that, within a profession, a
layered meaning is best, although it certainly helps to have a belief
system to make it so.
Thankfully, Dubrow's book does not descend to the radish/carrot quarrel of
Waiting for Godot; instead she emphasizes the importance of agreeing to
disagree, or delivering a lesson of what happens when life is out of
balance. For example, in "Photograph of General Petraeus with Paula
Broadwell" the General's love for Paula is clear: "how even this
professional touch / has made the General blush" (5-6). When a person lives
outside the prescribed lines, indicates Dubrow, there can be consequences.
Some are more dramatic than others. In "Persuasion" (Dubrow reads books to
pass the time as well), she indicates that this book world is not her world
either; she, unlike the characters in the poem, is uneasy in a world not
suited for her invention and attention: in short, she's bored. Yet, with an
air of frustration, Dubrow admits, "I hate to be Anne Elliott, but I am"
(21). What is there to do to pass the time: puzzles, amusements, community?
As Dubrow points out truthfully, "We persuade ourselves to love or not"
(29). One figures out the right language to describe the experience later.
In the end, each bears witness to life through an individual language, and
those languages, depending on the context, keep coming. Dubrow marks "Elegy
with Full Dress Blues" with yet another language: "Early in our marriage I
would stand / at the edge / of his closet like a visitor / at a
planetarium" (1-4). I have a friend who moved through various worlds in
this professional life: football, business, art, writing. They, too, all
have their language and sense of their own importance: each, both rightly
and wrongly, thinks it is the world. Perhaps, it is best to give up a sense
of one language being any better than the other. For Dubrow, working to
learn the language of her husband is worth it, just as for her husband
working to understand his poet-wife is worth it. As Dubrow points out in
"Liberty,"
I believed
in the seam our bodies made,
but when in the morning he put on
his uniform, it was what I'd sewn
myself that held. (16-20)
Notes
Throughout the text line numbers are used, with the exception of "What We
Talk About When We Talk About Deployment," which is a prose poem.
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