The New Anthology of American Poetry: Vol. III: Postmodernisms 1950-Present

RITA DOVE

436 RITA DOVE b. 1952 Rita dove’s poetry is remarkable for its nuanced and beautifully observed exploration of the lives of ordinary people. She is drawn toward what she calls “‘the underside of history,’ the dramas of ordinary people—the quiet courage of their actions, all which buoy up the big events.” Dove was for many years a student of the cello (she now plays viola da gamba), and her poems have a graceful musicality that, combined with her quietly inventive approach to metaphor and her deftly suggestive hand at characterization and storytelling, lends a luminous aura to the scenes of daily life and family intimacy that are the frequent subjects of her verse. She has often been praised for the skill with which she weaves African-American experience into the broader fabric of American life. Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, and she continues to identify with what she terms “a certain attitude and inflection—that Midwestern, flat, no-nonsense tone—that’s part of me, too.” She grew up in a supportive family, and both her father, Ray Dove, a chemist, and her mother, Elvira, a homemaker, encouraged Dove’s early tendency toward voracious reading and intellectual discovery . Dove’s three-part sequence “Adolescence” explores a teenage girl’s dawning awareness of her emerging womanhood. An outstanding student, Dove received a B.A. from Miami University and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the University of Tübingen in West Germany before completing an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1977. She married the German-born writer Fred Viebahn in 1979. In 1987, Dove won the Pulitzer Prize—only the second such award for an African-American poet—for her breakthrough volume Thomas and Beulah (1986), a book-length poetic sequence based on the lives of her maternal grandparents, who settled in Akron and began to raise a family early in the twentieth century. The first part of the sequence, “Mandolin,” offers glimpses of the life of Thomas, the poet’s maternal grandfather. The second and final segment of the sequence, “Canary in Bloom,” explores moments in the life of her maternal grandmother, Beulah. From 1993 to 1995, Dove was the first African-American poet to serve as the nation’s Poet Laureate (although Gwendolyn Brooks had served in 1985–86 under the earlier, less euphonious title Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress ). From 1981 to 1989, Dove taught at Arizona State University. In 1989 she took a teaching post at University of Virginia, where she currently holds an endowed chair as Commonwealth Professor of English. Adolescence—II Ø 437 further reading Rita Dove. American Smooth. New York: Norton, 2004. — — — —. Mother Love: New York: Norton, 1995. — — — —. On the Bus with Rosa Parks. New York: Norton, 1999. — — — —. Selected Poems. New York: Vintage, 1993. — — — —. Sonata Mulattica. New York: Norton, 2009. — — — —. Thomas and Beulah. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon Press, 1986. Adolescence—I In water-heavy nights behind grandmother’s porch We knelt in the tickling grass and whispered: Linda’s face hung before us, pale as a pecan, And it grew wise as she said: “A boy’s lips are soft, As soft as baby’s skin.” The air closed over her words. A firefly whirred in the air, and in the distance I could hear streetlamps ping Into miniature suns Against a feathery sky. Adolescence—II Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting. Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert. Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips. Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines. They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the washbowl, One on the bathtub edge; one leans against the door. “Can you feel it yet?” they whisper. I don’t know what to say, again. They chuckle, Patting their sleek bodies with their hands. “Well, maybe next time.” And they rise, Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight, * * * Ø Rita Dove 438 And vanish. I clutch at the ragged holes They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness. Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue. Adolescence—III With Dad gone, Mom and I worked The dusky rows of tomatoes. As they glowed orange in sunlight And rotted in shadows, I too Grew orange and softer, swelling out Starched cotton...