Rita Dove
b. 1952

Shape the lips to an o, say a. That's island.

One word of Swedish has changed the whole neighborhood.
When I look up, the yellow house on the corner
is a galleon stranded in flowers. Around it

the wind. Even the high roar of a leaf-mulcher
could be the horn blast from a ship
as it skirts the misted shoals.

We don't need much more to keep things going.
Families complete themselves
and refuse to budge from the present,
the present extends its glass forehead to sea
(backyard breezes, scattered cardinals)

and if, one evening, the house on the corner
took off over the marshland,
neither I nor my neighbor
would be amazed. 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 Yellow House on the Corner"

Biography / Criticism

Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio. Her father was a research chemist at the Goodyear plant in Akron and her mother, a homemaker. As a child, the young Dove had a particular fondness and passion for books and said that her parents encouraged her to read anything that she pleased; her parents valued and understood the importance of an education. Dove went on to graduate summa cum laude from Miami University of Ohio, and then to study German at the Universitat Tubingen, where she would become a Fulbright Scholar. She also received her Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa. It was there where she met her husband to be, German novelist and playwright Fred Viebahn. Together, the two currently reside in Charlottesville, Virginia with their daughter Aviva. She is presently a Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia where she teaches creative writing.

Dove has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and has held various seats and positions. She was the seventh Poet Laureate/Consultant in Poetry of the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995. She was the youngest person ever appointed to that position as well as the first African American ever appointed. She has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1978 and 1989 and from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1983-84. Dove has been given honorary doctorates from several different universities and colleges. She has held residencies at Tuskegee Institute, the National Humanities Center and the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Italy. She was named Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine and given the NAACP Great American Artist Award, both in 1993. She won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book of poems, Thomas and Beulah. She has been given the Folgers Shakespeare Library's Renaissance Forum Award, the General Electric Foundation award, as well as many other honors. In 1995 she, along with Jimmy Carter, welcomed a gathering of Nobel Laureates in Literature to the city of Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by the Cultural Olympiad of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. Dove was also responsible for writing the text for Alvin Singleton's symphony "Umoja - Each One of Us Counts," which was commissioned by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games to be performed during the opening festivities of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games.

Rita Dove's first work, The Yellow House on the Corner was published in 1980. It is a collection of poems dealing with various topics and experiences such as adolescence, romantic encounters, and glimpses into slave history. It was received well by most critics and caught the attention of her peers. Thomas and Beulah, another collection of poems is probably her most famous piece of literature. One critic wrote "[S]he speaks with a directness and a dramatic intensity that commands attention... [Rita Dove] fashions imaginative constructs that strike the reader as much by their 'rightness' as their originality." Using her poetry, she recounts the lives of her two grandparents, telling both sides of their story: Thomas first, and then Beulah, which in a sense gives her the last word. Dove explains their viewpoints regarding each other and life with a simple, yet elegant and realistic prose. Dove has penned many collections of poems; however, Through the Ivory Gate was her initial attempt at writing a novel. Encouraged by her husband and publishers, she wrote this story about a young African-American woman and her experiences as she returns to her hometown (which, coincidentally, is Akron) to perform and teach children at a local school about puppets and creative arts. Like the story's young protagonist, Dove herself is also very involved with young children. She has appeared on such shows such as "Sesame Street" and NBC's "The Today Show," attempting to draw people who have little prior interest in it to poetry. Her self-declared intention is "to bring poetry into everyday discourse ... to make it much more of a household word."

Selected Bibliography

Works by the Author

• American Smooth (2004)
• On the Bus with Rosa Parks (2000)
• ÒAn Intact World,Ó in New Expansive Poetry: Theory, Criticism, History (Ed. R.S. Gwynn. Ashland, OR: Story Line, 1999. 173-74.)
• Mother Love (1995)
• The Poet's World (1995)
• The Darker Face of the Earth (1994, 1996)
• Selected Poems (1993)
• Through the Ivory Gate (1992)
• Grace Notes (1989)
• Thomas and Beulah (1986)
• Museum (1983)
• Fifth Sunday (1983)
• The Yellow House on the Corner (1980)

Works about the Author

• "Rita Dove." Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. 1994.
• Bada, Valerie. Ò'Dramatising the Verse': or Versifying the Drama: Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play.Ó The Mechanics of the Mirage: Postwar American Poetry. Ed. Michel Delville and Christine Pagnouelle. Liege, Belgium: Liege Language and Literature, English Department, Universite de Liege, 2000. 277-84.
• Berger, Charles. ÒThe Granddaughter's Archive: Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah.Ó Western Humanities Review 50-51.4-1 (1996 Winter-1997 Spring): 359-63.
• Booth, Alison. ÒAbduction and Other Severe Pleasures: Rita Dove's Mother Love.Ó Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters 19.1 (1996 Winter): 125-30.
• Carlisle, Theodora. ÒReading the Scars: Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth.Ó African American Review 34.1 (2000 Spring): 135-50.
• Cook, Emily Walker. Ò'But She Won't Set Foot / In His Turtle-Dove Nash': Gender Roles and Gender Symbolism in Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah.Ó College Language Association Journal 38.3 (1995 Mar): 322-30.
• Cushman, Stephen. ÒAnd the Dove Returned.Ó Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters 19.1 (1996 Winter): 131-34.
• Erickson, Peter. ÒRita Dove's Shakespeares.Ó Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re-Visions in Literature and Performance. Ed. Marianne Novy. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. 87-101.
• Ingersoll, Earl G., ed. Conversations with Rita Dove. Jackson, MS: U P of Mississippi, 2003.
• Lofgren, Lotta. ÒPartial Horror: Fragmentation and Healing in Rita Dove's Mother Love.Ó Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters 19.1 (1996 Winter): 135-42.
• O'Connell, Erin. ÒBlack Oedipus? Slavery in Oedipus Tyrannus and The Darker Face of the Earth.Ó Text & Presentation: The Journal of the Comparative Drama Conference 24 (2003 Apr): 37-47.
• Pereira, Malin. Ò'When the Pear Blossoms/Cast Their Pale Faces on/the Darker Face of the Earth': Miscegenation, the Primal Scene, and the Incest Motif in Rita Dove's Work.Ó African American Review 36.2 (2002 Summer): 195-211.
• Proitsaki, Maria. ÒA 'Circus-Freak' and 20,000 Other Migrants in Rita Dove's Museum.Ó Moderna Sprak 93.2 (1999): 149-56.
• Righelato, Pat. ÒGeometry and Music: Rita Dove's Fifth Sunday.Ó Yearbook of English Studies 31 (2001): 62-73.
• Shaughnessy, Brenda. ÒRita Dove: Taking the Heat.Ó Publishers Weekly 246.15 (1999 Apr 12): 48-49.
• Stefen, Therese. ÒRooted Displacement in Form: Rita Dove's Sonnet Cycle Mother Love.Ó The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry. Ed. Joanne V. Gabbin. Charlottesville, VA: U P of Virginia, 1999. 60-76.
• Van Dyne, Susan R. ÒSiting the Poet: Rita Dove's Refiguring of Traditions.Ó Women Poets of the Americas: Toward a Pan-American Gathering. Ed. Jacqueline Vaught Brogan and Cordelia Chavez Candelaria, Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1999. 68-87.
• Walzer, Kevin. ÒRita Dove's Ascent.Ó ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum 6.3 (1996 Fall): 43-48.

Interviews

• Interview with VG recorded in November 2004.
• Cavalieri, Grace. Title: Rita Dove: An Interview Source: The American Poetry Review 24, no. 2 (1995 Mar-Apr): p. 11-15
• Pereira, Malin. ÒAn Interview with Rita Dove.Ó Contemporary Literature 40.2 (1999 Summer): 183-213.
• "Shine Up Your Words: A Morning with Rita Dove." Virginia Center for the Book (1994)
• "Bill Moyers' Journal: Poet Laureate Rita Dove." PBS (1994)
• "A Conversation with Poet Laureate Rita Dove." Library of Congress (1993)

Translations

Dutch

Iets dat te groot is om te zien: moderne Amerikaanse dichters. Trans. J. Bernlef and Peter Nijmeijer. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1991.

French

Thomas et Beulah = Thomas and Beulah. Trans. Jean Migrenne. Paris: Harmattan, 1999.

German

Die gleserne Stirn der Gegenwart. Heiderhoff, 1989.

Die morgenlandische Tanzerin: Gedichte. Trans. Karin Graf. Reinbek by Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1988.

Hebrew

Aruhat boker shel alufim. [Breakfast of Champions.] Trans. Mosheh Dor. Tel Aviv: Keshev le-shirah, 2000.

Related Links

Rita Dove This site includes a full bio, picture, and quotation from a Washington Post article.

Rita Dove - University of Virginia English Department This site contains a complete bibliography of Dove's works as well as a thorough listing of the various awards and honors she has received.

The Circle Association's Rita Dove Page This site features an interview with Dove and select poems.

This page was researched and submitted by Ray Oh. It was updated by Lauren Curtright on 1/5/05