Review by Abena Ntoso
In four poems published in The Wrath-Bearing Tree this spring, Jehanne Dubrow explores the intersection between social consciousness, war and poetry, using personal, political and mythological references to reveal the minor and massive conflicts and contradictions that arise in the lives of soldiers and the people who are closest to them.
Dubrow begins with "Poem for the Reader Who Said My Poems Were Sentimental and Should Engage in a More Complex Moral Reckoning with U.S. Military Actions," in which she introduces the word "divorce" and masterfully uses irregular spacing and a fragmented structure to interweave personal and global conflicts that relate to the idea of "divorce."
In a clear display of social consciousness, she frontloads the speaker's empathetic awareness of the humanitarian issue created by the hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan: "sickened by / the news / from Afghanistan, translators and their families / left waiting at the gates, / while American personnel / lifted off / in the wide indifference of their transport planes." This imagery paints a picture of an international form of diplomatic divorce, and a messy one at that.
Yet, as powerful as this opening anecdote is, her first line asserts that this is not why she said "divorce." After setting the stage with conflict and divorce on a global scale, she shifts to a very personal--and arguably miniscule--conflict that involves the speaker and her husband:
I said divorce because
I hadn't made room
in the cabinet for my husband's things,
and he was angry
I did not leave
a vacancy for what he carried home from war.
This section reveals so many complex issues at play; there is the idea of marriage and how seemingly minute annoyances can trigger profound vulnerabilities and emotions; there is the idea of a soldier returning home from deployment and the difficulty of re-integrating into relationships; and there is the idea of an empty space, a "vacancy" that is necessary for accommodating all of the physical and emotional baggage that comes with spending time in a war zone. Most importantly for the central idea of the poem, there is also the idea of the juxtaposition and interplay between minor personal conflicts and the quintessential massive global conflict: war. This dichotomy can be incredibly difficult to deal with, especially for soldiers and their family members, and Dubrow captures this dichotomy and interplay beautifully throughout the poem.
Describing specific domestic squabbles with metaphorical references to "larger" issues of war and military violence, Dubrow establishes a critical awareness of how personal conflicts and global conflicts coexist in a household that is influenced by war. After the speaker relates being tired of her husband "stacking bowls / on the top rack of the dishwasher," she refers to it as a "policy" that she disagrees with "when the lower rack is an open country / waiting to be washed clean," clearly a metaphor for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.
A vivid description of the husband's seeming approval of the use of drones in warfare is in turn followed by the rhetorical statement, "I believe / killing should come / with a risk of dying for the killers." Yet, after describing this ideological difference between the couple, the speaker asserts that "Marriage is not / two ideologies fighting at a table" but that marriage is about miniscule details that have deep emotional connections:
Marriage is two people
shouting about spices,
the ordering of jars--by alphabet or continent--
as if everything depends
on an ounce of tumeric fading
under glass.
Here she brings us back to the central thesis of how personal conflicts and global conflicts are intertwined, especially for a military family. With a nod to William Carlos Williams--"everything depends"--her word choice reveals a careful balance between the literal and the transcendent. Rather than trying to compare a personal experience to a major humanitarian issue, Dubrow expresses the details of marriage conflicts in a way that reveals the speaker's and the husband's vulnerabilities and profound awareness of the personal, military, and global issues at play. Her imagery and anecdotes emphasize the personal details and conflicts of military marriage, not as an excuse to ignore an international issue, but rather as a testimony, an acknowledgment that our lives are complex and struggles exist alongside one another and may even be intertwined.
Dubrow's masterful poem also has one of the most appropriate titles I have ever read. Not only does her entire poem lyrically elaborate the complex interplay between marriage conflict and global conflict in a military household, but in specifying that this poem is addressed to the reader who said Dubrow's poems "should engage in a more complex moral reckoning with U.S. military actions," Dubrow underscores her claim by offering this reader--and all of her readers--a poem that indeed presents the moral complexity in U.S. military actions and reminds us that, for all human beings, moral complexity involves both the personal and the political.
July 3, 2023
Listen to The Lives of Writers podcast episode featuring Jehanne Dubrow (1hr 15mins)