Dusting the Glass

In Dusting the Glass, Nancy Kaye
Dobson trains a compassionate gaze
upon often unglamorous protagonists
or uncomfortable subjects. Precise
language and startling imagery evoke
the subtle significances of everyday
existenceof youth and aging,
regrets and revelations, dreams and
disillusionmentwhile the spaces
between images allow us to personalize
them with our own recall. Thus, we
are simultaneously drawn into both
the poems themselves and our own
memories, and we then must, as the
author has done, confront them and
wrest meaning from them. In any
case, to read these poems, we must
be undaunted by what we might find,
as Dobson must have been when she
stared these always human and often
haunting images directly in the face.