The Hardship Post

Poetry. Jehanne Dubrow's book THE HARDSHIP POST was selected by Peter Pereira as the winner of the Three Candles Press First Book Award. It is a haunting and unflinching look at what it means to be a contemporary Jewish woman. Whether a series of portraits about diners, delis and bakeries, ruminations on Jewish holidays, or the devastating and lasting effects of the Holocaust, Dubrow writes with musical and measured lines. Beginning with fairy tales that inform later poems, she cautions that the world can be "a briar patch of thorns / and poisoned fruit, ovens / that open into fire." It is also a book that delights in language, in wonder, and shows that among the horrors we have wrought on each other, there is also love, also beauty, also compassion.