New Review of Dots & Dashes

| Book Review, Dots & Dashes

I first met Peter Molin when he was still active-duty and teaching literature at the United States Military Academy at West Point. I’m not sure who introduced me to Molin (perhaps it was Brian Turner or maybe Siobhan Fallon?), but it became immediately clear to me that he was a fierce advocate for contemporary war literature, and especially of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction written by veterans and military spouses.

In March, I’ll be part of a panel at AWP that Peter Molin is moderating, “Conflict, Crisis, Verse: Four Poets in Conversation, along with Dunya Mikhail, Benjamin Busch, and Brian Turner:

During a period of political exigency and social anxiety, how can poets and poetry teach, inspire, connect, and heal? Four widely published and celebrated poets—two military combat veterans, an Iraqi-American emigre, and the spouse of a military officer—draw on the urgency and insight born of their experience of war to trace the dynamic relationship of poetic voice and technique, personal circumstance and perspective, and turbulent national and global events.

In the meantime, Peter Molin has written a very generous review of Dots & Dashes. Here’s his opening sentence:

Jehanne Dubrow’s poems are always wonderfully realized, rich and complete in sense and spirit, each word and image precisely fitted and instantly accessible while also evoking subtler or higher orders of meaning, the formal artistry as refined as the language is relaxed in syntax and diction.

Wow! You can read the whole review here.