Civilians

<p>The final volume in Jehanne Dubrow's groundbreaking trilogy about the experience of being a modern military spouse <i>Civilians</i> examines a significant moment of transformation in a military marriage: the shift from active-duty service to civilian life. After twenty years in the U.S. Navy Dubrow's husband came to the end of his tenure as an officer. <i>Civilians </i>addresses what it means when someone who has been trained for war returns from the confining restrictive space of a naval vessel. Set amid America's seemingly endless conflicts Dubrow's poems confront pressing questions about the process of transitioning to a new reality as a noncombatant: What happens to the sailor removed from a world of uniforms and uniformity? How is his language changed? His geography? And what happens to a wife once physical and emotional distances are erased and she is reunited with her husband a man made strange and foreign by his contact with war? <p/> <i>Civilians </i>is a book both shadowed by and in conversation with the classics including Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses </i>Homer's <i>Odyssey </i>Euripides's<i> The Trojan Women </i> and Sophocles's <i>Philoctetes</i>. Blending formal and free verse with materials ranging from the historical to the personal Dubrow offers readers a candid look at the experience of watching a loved one adjust to homelife after a career of military service.</p>