Two selections from A Thousand Penelopes

← v8n1, Spring 2009

“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.”

marriage war identity

Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of two books of nonfiction, most recently Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022); nine poetry collections, most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021); and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Poetry , New England Review , Colorado Review , The Southern Review , and Blackbird , among others. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. Photo by Cedric Terrell