Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017. 76 pages. $15.95.
Military personnel stand watch while military spouses stand by. It’s a life we hear less about, which is surprising considering more than 50 percent of the military is married. In her latest book of poetry, Dots & Dashes, Jehanne Dubrow amplifies the voice of countless military spouses whose stories aren’t told as often. Dubrow details life as the wife of a naval officer in a surprising, authentic way and delivers essential insight into the daily lives of those families on the front lines. A Navy deployment means navigating life in the middle of an ocean for months on end. Dubrow writes about deployment from a different angle by delving into the unmooring that happens to loved ones left on land.
The book’s three sections harken to Morse code signals: “Please Stand By,” “Calling All Stations,” and “Over.” Throughout the book, Dubrow skillfully contends with complex topics including agency, autonomy, and authority when it comes to life as a military spouse. She also shows how living in the military community requires its own kind of language.
Dubrow is particularly adept at revealing the isolation spouses deal with when a loved one is deployed. In the first section of the book, the poem “What We Talk about When We Talk about Deployment” represents an ongoing conversation between military spouses who wait out deployments, standing by for their absent other halves. The poem elucidates the autonomy required for such a life. The narrative prose poem provides an intimate portrait of day-to-day life for these women. It also shows that while the women remain in a constant state of community by having a circular conversation perpetually focused on deployment, each must bear their husband’s deployment alone:
I say deployment is misfortune—you only care when it’s your own. Jane tells us about the time water filled the light above her bed. Turns out to be the air conditioner was on the fritz, that drop by drop it leaked into the globe of glass. Deployment, like sleeping underneath a small aquarium alive with electricity . . . What Mary dreams is one enormous couch, extending infinite across a room, where she can stretch her legs forever and never touch another body . . . I dream the four of us are talking. I can see the separate narratives our mouths have formed.
In other poems, Dubrow deftly demonstrates the power dynamics at play in a marriage once a spouse returns stateside. In the second section of the book, the poem “My Husband Calls Me Shipmate” shows the tension of agency and authority in a marriage where individuals have to relearn how to communicate after time apart. The title serves as the poem’s first line:
My Husband Calls Me Shipmate
to indicate
the rank
and file of
my mistake . . .
Here, we see the poem open in a clipped back and forth rhythm that mimics the banter of a marriage locked in the language of the military. Later in the poem we see that language of the military has no shut-off valve. The conversation between husband and wife also functions as a conversation between officer and private; the wife will never have rank, the scales will never be balanced, and there will always be a push/pull of power when the husband returns home.
Throughout the book, Dubrow flawlessly crafts the unspoken undercurrent evident in all military marriages: at any given moment, your loved one might be called to serve. The poem “The Alarm,” which is also in the second section of the book, shows the pressure on a marriage when the military comes first and a spouse is always on call:
At 4 a.m. your cell phone rings awake—
the alarm is set to a sonar’s ping . . .
. . . We’re always found—
as in the movie where the submarine
lies so submerged it stays unseen, unknown,
until a neon blip across the screen
confirms there’s something there. You grab the phone
at last and hit the snooze—five minutes more
to dream about the little pulse of war.
The little pulse of war resides in the marital bed, as both a barrier between the two spouses and as an essential part of each of their identities. In this moment, the speaker is aware of the commitment both partners must make—the disruptive phone doesn’t let either forget they each must answer to a higher call at any time.
Dubrow demonstrates vulnerability in surprising ways, delivering a clear picture of the toll deployment can take on two people committed to one another. In the last section, the poem “SOS” demonstrates the high stakes of being a supporting spouse in a military marriage.
If we are ships we too have signaled land
or called each other in the dark. We’ve scanned
the sky for help. We’ve said emergency,
a sequence made of silences and tones.
And when it ends, we’ve said seelonce feenee.
The sea says nothing back. The anchor groans.
In this instance, the marriage is compared to a ship as the husband and wife call out Mayday and the anchor—the base of their union—groans. In this poem, Dubrow does an exemplary job of pulling the thread of tension of being a military spouse taunt as a Right Angle knot.
Throughout, the book is anchored in the identity and acceptance of a life dedicated to putting country before self. The poem “The Beaufort Scale” illustrates the measure of things:
Because the wind is hard to quantify—
A thing invisible itself—we must
assess the wind by what it does, each gust
a consequence across the sea and sky:
that calm is mirrorlike, light air a sigh
that barely moves the waves, strong breezes thrust,
make whitecaps, and crests of foam imply
near gale or storm or hurricane. We trust
our eyes. We understand how feelings change
like weather troubling the surface of
the sea. We see our feelings in the surges
they create, the way they rearrange
the ocean of ourselves, that this is love—
these breaks and swells, these spindrift urges.
This poem bares the acceptance a military spouse must have to be able to go with the tide. Whether it’s smooth seas, a squall, or hurricane, the only choice is to stay afloat and weather the storm. The War on Terror is in its sixteenth year. It’s the longest war the US has ever fought. Dubrow communicates well the exhaustive feeling that befalls many military families—the feeling of isolation, inevitability, and enduring survival on endless, stormy seas. War undercuts an assumed civility and stability that we take for granted in times of peace. Dubrow slowly pulls away the veil of civility to show us the instability of living with and loving a spouse so close to the action.
