Border Crossings

Using both traditional and free-verse forms in her poems, Dubrow explores her experiences in some of life's "border crossings" -- divorce, medical crisis, the loss of parents, menopause, accident and injury. She grapples with difficult "truths that smell like old vegetables," emotional baggage "heavy as November evenings," and insistent "memories [that] siren the dark." Although some outcomes slip achingly beyond control and events "edg[e] ever closer to the border/Of the cliff I cannot fence," Dubrow discovers in art a gift of containment. Ancient Islamic painters depict borders within borders, continuity within change. And Ding potters "caress and curve their winter darkness/Into black bowls slim as April mornings,/That hold night firm within their fragile rims." Perhaps Dubrow's poems could be likened to these admirable bowls, crafted not only for their art but also for their capacity to receive and hold what their maker must pour out.