Jessica Dubey
All Those Years Underwater
In All Those Years Underwater, Jessica Dubey delves into the beauty and pain of her past. She calls up memories, ready and willing to take them on. The danger that ripples just below the surface is compelling and undeniable.
Praise for All Those Years Underwater
Danger is so delicate in these poems; it slides like a stiletto between the ribs. The poems stare you down with their lovely eyes, even as they insert the blade. The pain is real, the impact visceral. "Every word," as Dubey puts it, "honed/into weaponry forged/for each reckless cut." Prepare to have your breath taken away. — Marilyn McCabe, author of Being Many Seeds, Glass Factory, and Perpetual Motion
The title poem of Jessica Dubey’s All Those Years Underwater declares, “I throw myself into the water,/chase the burn/of chlorine, the muffled Eden/at the bottom, so intolerably/beautiful.” This collection dives deep into danger and desire, into the memories we carry forward in our brave and tender bodies. The poem titled “My daughter wants to derail trains” includes the lines “She wants to eat mischief/for breakfast.” So do each of Dubey’s engaging, surprising poems. — Suzanne Cleary, author of Crude Angel
Jessica Dubey's book of poems, All Those Years Underwater, cuts like an etching knife—precisely and beautifully, painfully and unforgettably. I read straight from beginning to end, then started right over at the beginning. It marks a remarkable second book for a poet who deserves our close attention. — Liz Rosenberg, prize-winning poet and author of Scribbles, Sorrows, and Russet Leather Boots: The Life of Louisa May Alcott
Books by the Author
Release Date: May 2022
For Dear Life
In the aftermath of her husband’s medical crisis and the brain surgery that followed, Jessica Dubey contemplates the possibility of a life without him, re-examines those early warning signs that something was terribly wrong, and walks side-by-side with her husband through “recovery’s uncertain re-entry.”
Praise for For Dear Life
Jessica Dubey’s chapbook For Dear Life is a journey into the unendurable—except, of course, the speaker was given no choice but to endure it—the fistula in her husband’s brain, the surgery that saved him, changed him and left her to understand who each of them has become here, on the other side of this cataclysm. Again and again these spare, unsentimental poems examine the unique after-life of trauma. Memories of the old life, the ordinary life—the one the couple accepted, counted on—suddenly swamped by an experience in which love, memory and identity have been disrupted. In the “cleave” poem Ten Days, for instance, the two columns offer a kind of palimpsest in which fragments of the old reality, (my lips on his/just the two of us), can’t quite hold their own amid the painful details of the current moment (dragged to the surface fentanyl free). Honest and startling and brave, For Dear Life offers a testament to love and survival.—Gail C. DiMaggio, author of Woman Prime and Ironwork
If illness is another country, it is one in which Jessica Dubey is an intrepid traveler. As caregiver to a critically ill partner, she responds with poetry. These are missives not just about suffering, but about witness to what she calls "the other reality" of sickness. As her husband’s brain swells and his memory glitches, she sees him through her poet eyes. The penumbra of language and poetry lights the way through this difficult experience. These are powerful and acerbic poems for any reader, but for anyone who has ever cared for another, who has lost a lover to the sudden blast of illness and suffering, or anyone who has ever been ill themselves, this collection will be a home. A harbor in the storm.—Elizabeth Cohen, author of five books of poetry, including Wonder Electric
No one is ever truly prepared to deal with grief and pain, especially when it involves a loved one. We become scattered, disoriented, "uncompassed", our world shattered in the face of the unknown. In For Dear Life Jessica Dubey puts the pieces back together again, poem by poem, line by line. At times heart-wrenching and at others clinical, Dubey reveals that in our struggles we come to know one another and ourselves all over again — as husband and father, as mother and wife, as poet — our roles and purpose in life redefined in the face of tragedy overcome.—Andrei Guruianu, author of Portraits of Time
Sample Poem from For Dear Life
Rewired
This is not how I envisioned my day—
drenched in humidity, hand extended
to receive screws and bolts,
brackets and washers.
My husband leans over an engine
four weeks after surgery,
four weeks after his head was pried open
like the hood of this car
so the surgeon could reach in,
remove a piece of his skull, cauterize
and staple him back together.
I cringe each time he straightens up,
hits his head on the hood,
imagine him in one of the helmets
designed for infants whose heads
are misshapen at birth.
All of his reshaping unseen,
neuroplasticity reconnecting
spark plug wires and intake hoses
so that his brain recognizes
the horizon rather than being adrift.
I know he should rest, but
maybe this is what he needs most,
to use his hands and his head
bent over an engine.
Instead of the incessant hum in his ear,
he hears his father’s voice
instructing him
how to dismantle a machine,
then make it work again.