JEHANNE DUBROW
Two selections from A Thousand Penelopes
“New Old-Girl” and “Where the Navy Sends You” belong to a work-in-progress, a collection of lyrical nonfiction essays that explores Jehanne Dubrow’s experiences as a navy wife. The manuscript, tentatively entitled A Thousand Penelopes, examines a military marriage through the lens of literary texts, including Homer’s The Odyssey, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.”
A Thousand Penelopes continues the work that Dubrow began in her third collection of poetry, Stateside, which will be published by Northwestern University Press in 2010. Both books reflect on the world of the “milspouse,” demonstrating how global conflict can affect a military family, in small ways and large. Through these projects, Dubrow hopes to give voice to a group that is often silenced and to expand poetry’s conversation about war to include a modern, female perspective of what it means to be “married to the military.”
New Old-Girl
Where the Navy Sends You