Rita Dove

Dove, Rita, 1952-, American poet, b. Akron, Ohio. Her first poetry collection, Ten Poems, was published in 1977. Her verse is at once concise, precise, and evocative. History as seen from an African-American perspective is perhaps her most important theme: the history of her country, as in the slavery poem sequence of The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), and the history of her own family, as in the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume Thomas and Beulah (1986), her grandparents' life story in verse. In her many collections, Dove also writes compellingly of mother-daughter relations, e.g., Mother Love (1995), everyday life, travel, and the aesthetic experience itself. From 1993 to 1995 she was U.S. poet laureate, the first African American to hold the post. An English professor at the Univ. of Virginia, Dove has also written short stories, a play, and a novel.

(born Aug. 28, 1952, Akron, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. writer and teacher. She studied writing at the University of Iowa and published the first of several chapbooks of her poetry in 1977. Her poems and short stories focus on the particulars of family life and personal struggle, addressing the larger dimensions of the African American experience primarily by indirection. Her poetry collections include Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986, Pulitzer Prize), Mother Love (1995), and On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). She was poet laureate of the U.S. from 1993 to 1995.

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Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio, USA) is an American poet and author. In 1987, she became the second African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950). From 1993 to 1995, she served as the first Black and the youngest Poet Laureate of the United States.

Life & Career

Rita Dove was born to Ray and Elvira Dove in Akron, Ohio in 1952. That year, Ray Dove became the first African American chemist to break the race barrier in the U.S. tire industry, as research chemist at Goodyear. Her mother, Elvira Dove nee Hord, had been an honors student in high school and loved to read literature -- a passion her daughter would share with her early on. A 1970 Presidential Scholar as one of the 100 top American high school graduates that year, Rita Dove graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Miami University in 1973 and received her MFA from the University of Iowa in 1977. In 1974/75 she held a Fulbright Scholarship at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and in 1993, at age 40, she was named Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress, making her both the youngest and the first African American author to hold that office (from 1993-1995). She went on to serve as Special Bicentennial Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress in 1999/2000, and in 2004 then-governor Mark Warner appointed her to a two year position as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In her public posts Dove concentrated on spreading the word about poetry and increasing public awareness of the benefits of literature. Since 1989 she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English.

Dove lives in Charlottesville with her husband, the German-born writer Fred Viebahn. They have a grown daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn (born 1983). Before moving to Virginia, she taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989.

Rita Dove’s work cannot be pinned down with regard to a specific era or school in contemporary literature; her wide-ranging topics and the precise poetic language with which she captures complex emotions defy easy categorization. Her most famous work to date is Thomas and Beulah, published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 1986, a collection of poems loosely based on the lives of her maternal grandparents, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. She has published eight volumes of poetry (most recently "American Smooth", 2004), a book of short stories ("Fifth Sunday", 1985), a collection of essays ("The Poet's World", 1995), the novel "Through the Ivory Gate" (1992) and the play "The Darker Face of the Earth" (1994; revised stage version 1996), which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon in 1996 (first European production: Royal National Theatre, London, 1999). She collaborated with composer John Williams on the song cycle "Seven for Love" (first performance: Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, 1998, conducted by the composer), and for "America's Millennium", the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Ms. Dove contributed — in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by John Williams's music — a poem to Steven Spielberg's documentary "The Unfinished Journey". Rita Dove's next poetry book, "Sonata Mulattica", is forthcoming in the spring of 2009.

Besides her Pulitzer Prize, she has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them 22 honorary doctorates, the 1996 National Humanities Medal / Charles Frankel Prize, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and, most recently, the 2006 Common Wealth of Distinguished Service Award for Literature. From 1994-2000 she was a senator (member of the governing board) of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and she is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Bibliography

• American Smooth (poems). W.W. Norton, 2004.
• On the Bus with Rosa Parks (poems). W.W. Norton, 1999.
• Mother Love (poems). W. W. Norton, 1995.
• The Poet's World (essays). The Library of Congress, 1995.
• The Darker Face of the Earth (play). Story Line Press, 1994; revised 2nd ed., 1996; updated 3rd ed., 2000.
• Selected Poems. Pantheon/Vintage, 1993.
• Through the Ivory Gate (novel). Pantheon Books, 1992.
• Grace Notes (poems). W.W. Norton, 1989.
• Thomas and Beulah (poems). Carnegie Mellon, 1986.
• Fifth Sunday (short stories). Callaloo Fiction Series, 1985.
• Museum (poems). Carnegie Mellon, 1983.
• The Yellow House on the Corner (poems). Carnegie Mellon, 1980
• Rita Dove(essays). www.bsu.edu/web/gstrecker/PoetryProject/ritadove.htm

References

External links

• The Rita Dove Homepage
• Rita Dove's comprehensive biography
• Rita Dove at the Academy of American Poets
• Rita Dove: Online Poems at Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Rita Dove interview at Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Poet Vision Presents: Rita Dove Reads Her Poetry Webcast (Library of Congress)
• Rita Dove: Online Poems at alittlepoetry.com
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