Dusting the Glass

In Dusting the Glass, Nancy KayeDobson trains a compassionate gazeupon often unglamorous protagonistsor uncomfortable subjects. Preciselanguage and startling imagery evokethe subtle significances of everydayexistenceof youth and aging,regrets and revelations, dreams anddisillusionmentwhile the spacesbetween images allow us to personalizethem with our own recall. Thus, weare simultaneously drawn into boththe poems themselves and our ownmemories, and we then must, as theauthor has done, confront them andwrest meaning from them. In anycase, to read these poems, we mustbe undaunted by what we might find,as Dobson must have been when shestared these always human and oftenhaunting images directly in the face.