Selected Poems of Rita Dove

by Rita Dove

Book Overview

Here in one volume is a selection of the extraordinary poems of Rita Dove, who, as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, brought poetry into the lives of millions of people. Along with a new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679750800
• ISBN13: 9780679750802
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Abstract beauty

Rita Dove is my favorite poet, her abstract and unique writing style is a breath of fresh air in the world of poetry

Rita Dove has a strong sense for narrative

What I love about Rita Dove's work is that she gives her poems a sense of narrative. It's easy to see why when you consider her background in writing fiction. She is influenced by her desire to give her poetry a self contained atmosphere that you see in fiction. I disagree with readers who think of her work as too cryptic. You really can't expect to fully understand her poems in one reading. You have to stand back (in a way) and think about her imagery and its connection to the narrative (best example to see this would be her work from Thomas and Beulah - which won the Pulitzer).I would recommend also reading "Conversations with Rita Dove" where she gives insight into how she approaches writing poetry and fiction.

Wonderful poems

Rita Dove's poetry is challenging: lyric, attentive, sure; yet it works in quieter veins than many more exhibitionist poets of the past thirty years. In the volumes collected in this "Selected Poems" Dove explores race, domesticity, history. The single most impressive featis her collection *Thomas and Beulah* which consists of two long sets of lyric poems which, combined, narrate a story (of her grandparents, the Thomas and Beulah of the title) and create a drama -- since the way in which Thomas sees things, in his half of the volume, is utterly different from the way in which Beulah sees things. What is most surprising is how these two people can live together, but in such different worlds. Ther is both strength and delicacy in these poems, and Beulah in particular emerges as one of the more significant figures in contempoary literature.(Dove's more recent works are also rich, and her "Mother Love" continues to explore, in a new way, the richness of family in America -- this time through a series of inventive sonnets, no two of which use the same sonnet form.)