When death presents itself to us, whether in the form of losing a grandparent, parent, or friend, the process of grieving is unique to the individual moment and situation. There is often a lack that is emphasized, revealed through the inability to express in words the emotions and physicality of losing that loved one. Susan L. Leary confronts the death of her brother in her book, Dressing the Bear, and is able to capture the raw brutality of loss, while grappling with the siblings’ interconnectedness. The opening poem, “If, Elsewhere,” appears on a left-facing page, followed by a blank one. From this starting point, the reader feels the weight of emptiness here, a void, but likewise an opportunity to take a deep breath. The speaker shares, “I write the tiniest, most unambitious poem / to keep you alive, / even if you must be / alive elsewhere.” While Leary is addressing her brother here, the reader is brought into the fold, and entrusted with what feels like a tightly kept secret. The reader eavesdrops on conversations between the poet-speaker and her brother, as she figures out how to mourn her brother, despite the complications experienced while he was alive.

While the blank pages might emphasize her brother's absence, he is clearly ever present in the speaker’s life. So the question becomes how does one grieve a person who still exists, just not in their original form? Perhaps one tactic the speaker employs is to see the connections between herself and her brother, as difficult as that might be. In the poem, “The Professor Asks Me to Write a Joyful Poem,” the speaker uses analogies to unpack some of the interrelatedness between her and her brother. “I am / disobedient as is joy as is you, / as is the better version of the truth / that lives inside the defense.” The choice of comparing disobedience and joy also serves to emphasize the similarities between the sister and the brother, as the reader gets the sense that the speaker is ignoring the professor’s request for her to “write a joyful poem.” The line, “Is forgetfulness a form of joy / or of disobedience?” begs to be reread, as this question will reappear in various iterations throughout this book. The last portion of this quote also hints at the notion that the ways in which her brother lived and died are complicated.

The use of analogies and logic, as an attempt to objectively process the loss of her brother, is a complex endeavor, especially when ultimately the subconscious takes over. The speaker often dreams of her brother, and occasionally he appears to be guiding her grieving process, forcing her to deal with his death. These surrealistic, tortured dreams are harsh at times, and the speaker finds her brother “...left behind in every dream. / My brother, crying.” In this particular instance, the speaker’s mother had given her some “Constructive Criticism,” asking why she “must be the crying, / left-behind person.” Even though her mother was trying to help her see the “rosy” side of her brother’s death, the cruel reality will find its way, even if it’s while the speaker is dreaming. She can trade her own suffering for that of her brother, or she can share this with him, while she grieves. Later on in the volume, logic appears again in “Mortality, Mathematically Speaking & with a Nod to Flavor Flav,” and the poem on the facing page, “In the Silhouette of Aftermath, Hindsight Fails the Search Party, the Mourner.” In the first poem, the speaker presents an equation: “Time of death minus / time of trauma equals time of burden.” This poem presents all of the ways that mourners attempt to quantify and pose questions to get at the deeper answers of why this happened, while the speaker reveals, “I wish I’d told you sooner.” But there is still a sense there that she knows she couldn’t have prevented her brother’s death. The second poem is an effective pair to the first, as it also delves into the hindsight of the mourners, as people always analyze actions after an event. After all, “Who is memory’s protagonist when language fails / & succeeds at the task?” While tragedies and death can’t always be explained, the speaker offers a pointed remark in the last two lines: “We are all obsessed with what happened. / Where were we when it was happening?” This commentary allows the reader a window into a layer of the grieving process for the poet-speaker and her family, and the retrospective guilt they may be experiencing after not having intervened while the brother was alive and struggling.

The use of analogies and questions in this book aren’t the only craft techniques that Leary employs. In many poems, she uses lowercase letters, and frequent ampersands, which are both paired at times with end punctuation. Take, for instance, this line from the poem, “Floating Gospel”: “Nothing about the water is heroic. & not because the water is the site / of your burial.” Knowing the etymology of the ampersand symbol adds interpretation. Originally it was the result of the merging of et (meaning and) in Latin, and was initially pronounced and per se and, which eventually became the modern pronunciation of ampersand. In trying to come to terms with her brother’s death, and the aftermath of it all, the speaker is joining herself to him. But perhaps that is also the ultimate power of the living survivors of the deceased, in that they have their own decisions to make. Parts of the speaker have died alongside her brother, however, she is as alive as ever, able to fully control the narrative, and change and per se and.