Review: Stateside by Jehanne Dubrow

Publication Date: March 29, 2010

Synopsis:
A collection of poems about Jehanne Debrow's husband as he is deployed to the war, her reaction to his absence, and what changed after he returned.

Winner of several awards, this collection is acclaimed for its look at the martial stress Dubrow experiences and how she puts it into words that others can understand.

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Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Date Read: February 25, 2018

Thoughts:
I read this collection as part of my Formal Poetry class this semester, and I have to confess that it's the first collection I've ever read. I'm generally not the kind of person who reads poetry or writes it (with the exception of what I have to write for this class), so I knew that my opinions of this collection would be far less critical that someone who knows more about poetry.

That being said, I found that I rather enjoyed this collection. It was written in a fairly simple manner, and I didn't feel like I had to work too hard to understand what was happening in the poems. The language was nothing that people wouldn't normally use, and there weren't any lofty ideas that required hours of dissection to properly understand. It was really straightforward - what a woman experiences when her husband leaves for the war.

I found the poems fun to read and was interested in the way she used meter and form to express her emotions and memories. Of course, me not really being into poetry means that I wasn't as analytical as the rest of my classmates, but that didn't mean that I couldn't appreciate what she wrote and how she did it.

Character(s):
There aren't any characters in this collection, not really. I like Jehanne Dubrow's writing voice, so I guess you can say that I liked her as a character.

Overall:
3.5 stars. I think it's a pretty good collection, but I'm not really the best judge. It's worth picking up though.