IN
Riat Dove, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. She has published the novel Through the Ivory Gate, a collection of stories, a verse drama, a book of essays and five books of poetry, among them Thomas and Beulah, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. The recipient of numerous literary fellowships and awards, she is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and lives near Charlottesville with her husband, Fred Viebahn, and their daughter, Aviva.
"Remarkable . . . a poet of dramatic force." --The New York Review
of Books
"Consistently accomplished . . . Dove's is a brilliant mind that
seeks for itself the widest possible play, an ever-expanding range
of reference, the most acute distinctions, and the most subtle
shadings of meaning. . . . Her is a major career." --Arnold
Rampersad, Callaloo
"Dove's poems, rich with elegant phrasing and Southern spice, blast
tradition by pulling readers into other lives and then dazzle them
with an often startling mastery of language." --Boston Globe
"Rita Dove . . . is a devoted and subtle storyteller [whose] gifts
are evoking, and sometimes exalting, the everyday moments we live
by but may neglect or forget, the music of her words issuing a
message of uncanny integrity and calm. Though often
writing of private experience (mothering, mourning death, watching
rain), she never seems to lose sight of the world beyond."
--Newsweek
"Remarkable . . . a poet of dramatic force." --The New York
Review of Books
"Consistently accomplished . . . Dove's is a brilliant mind that
seeks for itself the widest possible play, an ever-expanding range
of reference, the most acute distinctions, and the most subtle
shadings of meaning. . . . Her is a major career." --Arnold
Rampersad, Callaloo
"Dove's poems, rich with elegant phrasing and Southern spice, blast
tradition by pulling readers into other lives and then dazzle them
with an often startling mastery of language." --Boston
Globe
"Rita Dove . . . is a devoted and subtle storyteller [whose] gifts
are evoking, and sometimes exalting, the everyday moments we live
by but may neglect or forget, the music of her words issuing a
message of uncanny integrity and calm. Though often writing of
private experience (mothering, mourning death, watching rain), she
never seems to lose sight of the world beyond." --Newsweek
Dove is a prolific poet whose honors include the Pulitzer Prize and her present appointment as Poet Laureate of the United States (she is the youngest poet and the only African American to have held this post). This book includes poems from her first three books. A prose introduction by the author about becoming a writer ends with a recent autobiographical poem, ``In the Old Neighborhood,'' which reiterates in powerful images the concern with self-definition and history in the older poems. Of strawberries, she writes, ``Mom sliced the red hearts into sugar/ and left them to build their own/ improbable juice.'' Indeed, the personal narrative, both contemporary and historical, drives these poems; full of observed detail, they are shaped by huge events--birth, death, hardship, racism, politics: ``No front yard to speak of/just a porch cantilevered on faith.'' ``Thomas and Beulah,'' the magnificent narrative sequence based on Dove's grandparents' lives, is included in its entirety. Essential.-- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Ask a Question About this Product More... |