Featured Poet: Susanne Dubroff, Hanover

Susanne's poetry and translations of poetry have been published widely. Her most recent poems have been published in The Great River Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, Poetry, Paris Review, Ship of Fools and North American Review. She had published three chapbooks, when, in 2004, White Pine Press published: This Smoke That Carried Us: Selected Poems of Rene Char.   In June 2008, Word Tech Editions will publish The One Remaining Star, a book of Susanne's own poems. She has read her work frequently in New England. Most recently, she's been teaching courses in appreciation of major poets at ILEAD (The Institute for Lifelong Learning at Dartmouth). In 1997, she was a fellow at Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers near Edinburgh in Scotland, in 1998 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and in 2000 at Lavigny, the retreat of the Ledig-Rowahlt Institute in Switzerland. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the New Hampshire State Council for the Arts. She is a retired psychiatric social worker and the mother of three children and one grandchild.

Of her poem, Susanne writes:
 
"A Warrior" was originally published in The Sonora Review.  Some years ago, while waiting in line to attend an exhibition of Celtic Art at the MFA, Boston, it occurred to me that many of those waiting in line with me were "the Boston Irish" (as they had always been referred to, at least locally). I glanced around at several of the folks..and found myself experiencing a waking dream. What ensued is recorded in the poem.
 
A Warrior
 
They are not merely philologists;
they also make other, more ancient noises,
creaturely, comforting, intonations,
elisions, breathings around certain consonants,
furthering the persistence of
kindness, warmth.
Once at the Celtic Exhibit,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
a warrior!  Miraculously
accurate incongruity--not
overly tall or short; lean,
his loin cloth, his meagre
leather trappings,
ornate shield and spear.
His proud, sober eyes emptied,
into mine, again an instance of conversation
occuring above, below, anywhere
but at the impoverished level
of the referential. I can only
tell you of the reverential
with which I tried to receive,
and of course, in a moment,
he was gone.

originally published in Sonora Review, University of Arizona