Rita Dove (1952– )

Title: Dove, Rita
Source: University of Virginia News
Services
More informationRita Dove is widely regarded as one of America's finest living poets, having published numerous collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Thomas and Beulah (1986). She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 until 1995, the first African American to hold that post; she also was Virginia Poet Laureate from 2004 until 2006. Noted for her craftsmanship—rich, detailed imagery and precise, musical language and form—she has received numerous awards for her poetry and other writing, which includes fiction, essays, drama, and a song cycle. In 1989 she became the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Early Years

Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952, where her father was the first black chemist in the American rubber industry. She went on to graduate summa cum laude from Miami University (Ohio), attend the University of Tübingen (Germany) on a Fulbright fellowship, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Her first book, The Yellow House on the Corner, was published in 1980. Its poems explore subjects as diverse as adolescence, slave life, and small-town culture, demonstrating Dove's technical skill as well as her range.

In Museum (1983), Dove continued to interweave personal memory with historical narratives. A number of poems in this volume give voice to others through dramatic or near-dramatic monologues, as in her well-known poem "Parsley." This poem imagines black cane workers and the Dominican dictator who ordered 20,000 field workers killed in 1937 because they could not pronounce the letter "r" in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley.

[ … ] As he paces he wonders
Who can I kill today. And for a moment
the little knot of screams
is still. [ … ]

[ … ] He will
order many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.

Next came Dove's ensemble of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), which analyzes the effect of what she has called "the fable-like aspects of middle class life" on its African American protagonists. Thomas and Beulah appeared in 1986 and was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In a pair of sequences, the book loosely traces the lives of the poet's maternal grandparents who migrated north from different southern states and married in Ohio.

Dove's fourth collection, Grace Notes (1989), primarily explores autobiographical events from childhood and the cusp of adolescence. Titled after embellishments added to the basic melody in music, this more personal collection considers memory, pain, and regret —the often heartbreaking accompaniments to daily life.

Later Career

Title: 2004.4.16 - Rita Dove,
clipped
Source: VFH Radio
More informationDove's Selected Poems (1993) appeared in the year the Library of Congress named her the U.S. Poet Laureate. She became simultaneously the youngest and first African American poet formally named to that position.

Her literary attentions at this time expanded into the novel, essays, and verse drama. Her novel Through the Ivory Gate—whose protagonist returns to a Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-the-schools confronting memories of racism, family, and rejected love—was published in 1992. A book of Dove's essays, The Poet's World, appeared in 1995.

The Darker Face of the Earth, a retelling of the Oedipus myth set on a pre–Civil War slave plantation and presented as a verse drama, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., among other theaters. She also composed a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, which premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on July 25, 1998.

Dove's fifth poetry collection, Mother Love (1995), explored place, myth, and the mother-daughter relationship. Her later works of poetry continue to examine the link between individual fates and the grand arc of history. On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999) features a sequence honoring the civil rights legend, but also journeys through other lives in the shadows: working mothers, jitterbug queens, and the poet herself ("I vowed I'd get off / somewhere grand … Who am I kidding? Here I am.").

Alongside forms of ballroom dancing, American Smooth (2004) pays homage to African American figures such as Oscar-winning actress Hattie McDaniel and World War I lieutenant and bandleader James Reese Europe. Dove's ability to highlight a lyric moment while bearing witness to historical landscapes, evident throughout her poetry, is particularly effective in this collection in poems such as "Brown" and "Ripont."

Critical reception and recognition

The power and implications of language have been a recurrent concern of Dove's work, as in her early poem "Ö":

[ … ] Sometimes

a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation.
You start out with one thing, end
up with another, and nothing's
like it used to be, not even the future.

The critic David Young has noted her "steadiness of vision and a discipline of style that make [her poems] all the more convincing." After the publication of American Smooth, the Virginia Quarterly Review commented that the book "continues its author's commitment to integrating the ornamental, the nominally 'superfluous,' into the weight of serious subject matter."

Title: Rita Dove, circa 1992
Source: Special Collections,
University of Virginia
More informationAmong Dove's many accolades are Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Mellon fellowships, the National Humanities Medal, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, the NAACP Great American Artist Award, Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year" Award, and the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service. Her service as Poet Laureate of the United States and Virginia Poet Laureate, as well as a strong media presence (through outlets ranging from NBC's Today Show to a weekly column called "The Poet's Choice," which ran in the Washington Post from 2000 to 2002) has helped make her one of the best-known poets in the United States today. In the introduction to The Best American Poetry 2000, which Dove guest-edited, David Lehman calls her "one of the most prominent figures in the poetry world." On October 18, 2008, the Library of Virginia honored Rita Dove with a lifetime achievement award.

Dove taught at Arizona State University in Tempe from 1981 until 1989; she subsequently joined the faculty at the University of Virginia. Dove lives near Charlottesville with her husband, German writer Fred Viebahn; they have a grown daughter, Aviva.

Major Works

Ten Poems (1977)
The Only Dark Spot in the Sky (1980)
The Yellow House on the Corner (1980)
Mandolin (1982)
Museum (1983)
Fifth Sunday (1985)
Thomas and Beulah (1986)
The Other Side of the House (1988)
Grace Notes (1989)
Selected Poems (1993)
The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play in Fourteen Scenes (1994)
Mother Love (1995)
On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999)
American Smooth (2004)

Time Line

August 28, 1952 - Rita Dove is born in Akron, Ohio, where her father is one of the first black chemists in the American rubber industry.
1980 - Rita Dove's first volume of poetry, The Yellow House on the Corner, is published.
1986 - Rita Dove's third volume of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, is published. It receives the Pulitzer Prize for poetry the following year (1987).
1993 - Rita Dove's Selected Poems is published. During this year the Library of Congress names her the U.S. Poet Laureate, and she becomes simultaneously the youngest and first African American poet formally named to the position.
1996 - Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, a retelling of the Oedipus myth set on a pre–Civil War slave plantation, premieres at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It is subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C and other theaters.
July 25, 1998 - Rita Dove's song cycle for soprano and orchestra, Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, premieres with the Boston Orchestra.
October 18, 2008 - The Library of Virginia honors Rita Dove with a lifetime achievement award.