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American Smooth by Rita Dove | Poetry Foundation

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The Breathing, the Endless News by Rita Dove

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January 1989 | Pamela Alexander, Angela Ball, Judith Berke, John Blair, Philip Booth, Rita Dove, Alice Friman, Malcolm Glass, Rodney Jones, Sharon Libera, Thomas Lux, Michael McFee, Sharon Olds, Carole Oles, Jim Powell, James Reiss, J. Rosser, Kevin Stein, Jeanne Walker, Paul Zarzyski, Alfred Corn

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Sonnet ("Nothing can console me...") by Rita Dove |... | Poetry Magazine

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October 1992 | Jorge Borges, Rita Dove, Richard Foerster, Allison Funk, Richard Jones, Alex McKenzie, W. Merwin, Cesare Pavese, J. Rosser, Alison Stone, Robert Shaw

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"Rita Dove." Biography, www.biography.com/writer/rita-dove. Accessed 17 May 2019.

"Rita Dove." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, 4 Apr. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Rita-Dove. Accessed 17 May 2019.

"Rita Dove." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rita-dove. Accessed 17 May 2019.

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American poet Rita Dove was born on August 28th, in 1952 in Akron, Ohio. Extremely accomplished, Dove would later become the first African American, woman, as well as youngest person to hold the title of Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. This title was give to her by the Library of Congress. After graduating high school as one of the top ranked students in the nation, and having received the Presidential Scholar award, Dove attended Miami University in Ohio and graduated summa cum laude. Dove then moved on to Tübingen University in Germany. Dove received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany. Receiving a creative writing M.F.A. at the University of Iowa in 1977, Dove then went on to publish a book of poetry before going on to teach at Arizona State University. In the 1970s Dove met her husband, Fred Viebahn at the University of Iowa. Dove and her husband later got married in 1979. The two have a daughter together, named Ava. Currently, she teaches poetry at the University of Virginia. Some early poetry collections by Dove include The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), and Museum (1983). She later released a autobiography about her grandparents in 1986 which received the poetry Pulitzer prize. Throughout the 1990s, Dove published many other books including Grace Notes, Mother Love, and On the Bus with Rosa Parks. In 1996 she was awarded by Bill Clinton with the National Humanities Medal. Also in 1996, Dove won the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. Dove's prose works include Fifth Sunday (1985), Through the Ivory Gate (1992), and The Poet's World (1995).

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October/November 1987 | Paul Engle, Maria Flook, Wallace Fowlie, Dana Gioia, Thom Gunn, David Ignatow, X Kennedy, Richard Kenney, Brad Leithauser, Janet Lewis, J. McClatchy, Wesley McNair, James Merrill, Lisel Mueller, Joyce Oates, Carole Oles, Elder Olson, Joseph Parisi, Linda Pastan, Peter Porter, M.

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Poem: AGOSTA THE WINGED MAN AND RASHA THE BLACK DOVE

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Poem: AGOSTA THE WINGED MAN AND RASHA THE BLACK DOVE

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AGOSTA THE WINGED MAN AND RASHA THE BLACK DOVE by Rita Dove

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November 1981 | Brom Weber, Aris Alexandhrou, Andonis Decavalles, Aris Dhikteos, Athos Dhimoulas, Dhimitris Dhoukaris, Rita Dove, T. Frangopoulos, Nikos Karouzos, Tasos Livadhitis, Christopher Middleton, Aristotle Nikolaidis, P. Papadhitsas, Yannis Papadhopoulos, A. Ramanujan, Eleni Vakalo, Takis Varvitsiotis, James Wright

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Heart to Heart by Rita Dove | Poetry Foundation

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Article: Rita Dove about her life and works

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Article: Rita Dove about her life and works

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When I began writingabout ordinary, middle-class African Americans' lives-especially in Thomas and Beulah, my third book of poetry, which deals with a solid lifelong marriage devoid of extraordinary drama-I was keenly aware that such experiences had not received their due in contemporary poetry. Whatever I pursue-writing poetry or teaching or speaking in public-I want to be excited by the challenge, curious about where life might next lead me. If I'm not both thrilled and terrified at the prospect of stepping out into unknown territory that might teach me something new, then something is wrong, then I'm too complacent.

Receiving the Pulitzer Prize was like having a spotlight turned on. Although I had published several books, I did not expect much in the way of media attention. Poets aren't used to a lot of fanfare, particularly in this country; rarely are they thrust upon a national stage. And yet suddenly there was a growing audience reading my work and listening to me. As an artist, it was immensely gratifying to see how these stories dealing with intimate moments in the lives of ordinary people, those who'll never make it into the history books, found resonance on a national level and beyond, regardless of race or gender.

Being chosen as our nation's first African-American poet laureate was a further challenge. I felt called to speak to the importance of poetry, the humanities and the arts in our lives. It meant serving as a lightning rod for the American people in their quest for those truths that neither politics nor psychotherapy could address. And indeed, I was immediately inundated with letters from total strangers who were eager to tell me about the first time they had encountered poetry and how it had changed their lives. Many of these accounts began with "I don't know much about poetry" and were often followed by a passionate description of a particular poem. These confessions impressed and saddened me. Because many of my correspondents had had no exposure to poetry as children in school, they were afraid of sounding "stupid" and being deemed unworthy of discussing this "elite" art form. Yet this trepidation could be overcome through the impact of a single poem, with the rapt reader finding emotional support and solace for his or her soul.

When I was asked to be the sole editor of The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry, I encountered another glass ceiling. Anthologies are often done by teams. For a lone individual (and an African-American woman at that!) to be given the responsibility of choosing who would represent American poetry for the entire past century was unheard of. Producing a mainstream anthology in a field dominated by a mostly white male establishment was a daunting task, and I took it very seriously. That there was some pushback came as no surprise-but raising hackles means you're not being ignored; you're pushing the conversation forward.

Although I am not a confrontational person by nature, racism and sexism are still very much alive, and whenever I encounter prejudice, I tackle the issues and move on, refusing to be sidetracked by hate or bitterness. When I was a young poet, my work was considered "slight" by some male critics. The sexist undertone was undeniable, though difficult to corroborate. These things are subtle. For example, during my 20s and 30s there was an unspoken rule that if you wore makeup or gave a poetry reading in a dress, you weren't considered a serious artist-a variation on brain vs. beauty, that ancient claim that pretty girls are airheads and smart girls are plain. It sounds so trivial nowadays, yet the implications could be profound-or so I was told. To hell with it, was my response. This is who I am. I still wear skirts to readings. And I still like my lipstick!
Dove, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry in 1987, served as U.S. poet laureate from 1993 to 1995.

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Rita Dove: The First Black U.S. Poet Laureate

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When I began writingabout ordinary, middle-class African Americans' lives-especially in Thomas and Beulah, my third book of poetry, which deals with a solid lifelong marriage devoid of extraordinary drama-I was keenly aware that such experiences had not received their due in contemporary poetry.

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Article: Interview with Associate Editor Lucinda Moore of Smithsonian.com

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Article: Interview with Associate Editor Lucinda Moore of Smithsonian.com

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The Pulitzer-Prize winning poet discusses how new technologies will affect the creative process

Rita Dove was 41 years old when, in 1993, she became poet laureate of the United States-the youngest person and the first African-American to serve in the post. She has published nine books of poetry, including the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, based on her grandparents, and this past year's Sonata Mulattica. Dove, who has also written short stories, a verse play and a novel, is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She spoke with associate editor Lucinda Moore.

What is the future of literature?
With the advent of technology and cyberspace and iPads and Kindle, I feel change happening even at the level of composition. In the past, a reader had to rely upon the author to supply all the details of what it was like to hike in Nepal, let's say. Thanks to search engines, now you can quickly look it up, and that's going to change the way literature is written.

How will blogs, YouTube and other technology affect authors?
The intimacy that literature affords-that feeling that you are really in the head of the characters portrayed-used to be almost the private privilege of plays, novels and poetry. Now there's another place that has it-be it blogs, Facebook or Twitter-and it gives you second-by-second accounts. That does not diminish the power of literature, because literature is shaped intimacy. For the writer, it raises the bar, as it should. The very fact that we can be found at any moment, through a cellphone or whatever, changes the way plot will work. How many plots were dependent upon the fact that a note had to be passed here or there or that someone didn't answer the phone?

What is shaping literature and its future?
I flash back to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which came out in 1969. It seemed to be a plot that had exploded, which you then had to piece together. It seemed to acknowledge the fact that you couldn't put all the pieces together right away. At the end of the novel, it still felt like it was going on. The acknowledgement that things are going to be playing out beyond the provenance of the work of fiction had some of its seeds right there. I think you see more of a willingness in literature to acknowledge the fact that this is not a perfectly shaped whole, that lives are going to be messy.

Things like the iPad and Kindle will allow us to carry around massive amounts of literature. Because of that, literature is going to be looking for different ways to distinguish itself from mass media, and it's going to feel freer to experiment. Because of movies, which satisfy so many people's need for a visual effect and aural effect combined, theater is going to go increasingly toward things that only theater can do. In the new poetry, I see a fascinating confidence in switching viewpoints very quickly, in mid-sentence practically. So there's a speeding up of changing viewpoints and expressions that comes from technology speeding us up and the fact that you can keep several screens open at a time and divide your attention. The narratives are getting faster and are having more interruptions because we can tolerate interruption.

Genealogical research is causing more people to embrace a multiracial heritage. How will this affect literature?
It cuts down on stereotyping and the fear of the other, because we all are the other or the other is us. The assumptions of the mainstream change. A mainstream novel of the early '70s or so would contain the dilemmas of, say, a household in Connecticut. Everything that had to do with country clubs or the tensions at a cocktail party was assumed to be the mainstream. That left a burden of explanation for any writer who was not of the mainstream. So a Jewish-American writer had to go into great details to explain Seder, or an African-American writer had to explain-somehow in the context of their story-how they did their hair. Now that we are more and more identifying ourselves as multiracial, these elements of other cultures are becoming better known. That will change the nature of the mainstream, and that is quite a tidal wave.

You once asked, "Why can't we find the universal in our differences?" Is literature getting there?
Absolutely. That's one of the great shining lights of the future. I think as we become more multicultural and able to look at each corner of the world, the more at ease we are with our differences. And we are going to be more comfortable reading something about experiences which are, on the surface, very different from ours. Yet we'll still feel confident that we can access the common humanity.

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Rita Dove was 41 years old when, in 1993, she became poet laureate of the United States-the youngest person and the first African-American to serve in the post. She has published nine books of poetry, including the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah , based on her grandparents, and this past year's Sonata Mulattica .

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Reunion 2005 (audio only) by Rita Dove - Poems | Academy of American Poets

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Reunion 2005 (audio only) - Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.