Rita Dove

Rita Dove
Born	Rita Frances Dove (1952-08-28) August 28, 1952 Akron, Ohio, USA
Occupation	Poet, author, university professor
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Miami University Universität Tübingen University of Iowa
Notable work(s)	Thomas and Beulah The Darker Face of the Earth Sonata Mulattica
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987) United States Poet Laureate (1993–95) Poet Laureate of Virginia (2004–2006) 1996 National Humanities Medal 2011 National Medal of Arts
Spouse(s)	Fred Viebahn (1979–present)

Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and author. From 1993–1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She was the first African American to be appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 out of the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999–2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004–2006.

Biography

Early years

Dove was born in Akron, Ohio to Ray Dove, the first African American chemist to work in the U.S. tire industry (as research chemist at Goodyear), and Elvira Hord, who achieved honors in high school and would share her passion for reading with her daughter. In 1970 Dove graduated from Buchtel High School as a Presidential Scholar, making her one of the 100 top American high school graduates that year. Later, Dove graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Miami University in 1973 and received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1977. In 1974 she held a Fulbright Scholarship from Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany.

Career

Dove taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and was named Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress, an office she held from 1993 to 1995. At age 40, Dove was the youngest person to hold the position and is the first African American to hold the position since the title was changed to Poet Laureate (Robert Hayden had served as the first non-white Consultant in Poetry from 1976–78, and Gwendolyn Brooks had been the last Consultant in Poetry in 1985–86). Early in her tenure as poet laureate, Bill Moyers featured Rita Dove in a one hour interview on his PBS prime time program Bill Moyers Journal. Since 1989 she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English.

Rita Dove also served as a Special Bicentennial Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1999/2000, along with Louise Glück and W. S. Merwin. In 2004 then-governor Mark Warner of Virginia appointed her to a two-year position as Poet Laureate of Virginia. In her public posts, Dove concentrated on spreading the word about poetry and increasing public awareness of the benefits of literature. As United States Poet Laureate, for example, she also brought together writers to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists.

Dove’s work cannot be confined 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 nine volumes of poetry, a book of short stories (Fifth Sunday, 1985), a collection of essays (The Poet's World, 1995), and a novel, Through the Ivory Gate (1992).

In 1994 she published the play The Darker Face of the Earth (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 Luck" (first performance: Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, 1998, conducted by the composer). 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. Dove's latest and, to date, most ambitious collection of poetry, Sonata Mulattica, was published in 2009. Over its more than 200 pages, it "has the sweep and vivid characters of a novel", as Mark Doty wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine.

Besides her Pulitzer Prize, Rita Dove has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them 24 honorary doctorates (most recently, in 2013, from Emerson College and Emory University ), the 1996 National Humanities Medal / Charles Frankel Prize from President Bill Clinton, the 3rd Annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities in 1997, and more recently, the 2006 Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service in Literature, the 2007 Chubb Fellowship at Yale University, the 2008 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2009 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the 2009 Premio Capri and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. From 1994–2000 she was a senator (member of the governing board) of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and from 2006 to 2012 she served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival on many occasions, most recently in 2010.

Dove edited The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry, published in 2011. It provoked heated controversy as she was accused of valuing an inclusive, populist agenda over quality. Poet John Olson commented that "her exclusions are breathtaking". Well-known poets left out include Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Sterling Brown, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff and Lorine Niedecker. Critic Helen Vendler condemned Dove's choices, asking "why are we being asked to sample so many poets of little or no lasting value?". Dove defended her choices and omissions vigorously in her response to Vendler in The New York Review of Books, as well as in wide-ranging interviews with The Writer's Chronicle, with poet Jericho Brown on the Best American Poetry website and with Bill Moyers on his public television show Moyers & Company.

Personal life

Dove married Fred Viebahn, a German-born writer, in 1979. Their daughter Aviva Dove-Viebahn was born in 1983. The couple are avid ballroom dancers, and have participated in a number of showcase performances. Dove and her husband live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Bibliography

Poetry Collections

• Sonata Mulattica (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), ISBN 978-0-393-07008-8
• American Smooth (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), ISBN 978-0-393-05987-8
• On the Bus with Rosa Parks (New York: Norton, 1999), ISBN 978-0-393-04722-6
• Mother Love (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), ISBN 978-0-393-31444-1
• Selected Poems (Pantheon/Vintage, 1993), ISBN 978-0-679-75080-2
• Grace Notes (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), ISBN 978-0-393-02719-8
• Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie Mellon Press, 1986), ISBN 978-0-88748-021-8
• Museum (Carnegie Mellon, 1983)
• The Yellow House on the Corner (Carnegie Mellon Press, 1980)

Essays

• The Poet's World (Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 1995)

Drama

• The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play in Fourteen Scenes (Story Line Press, 1994)

Novels

• Through the Ivory Gate (Pantheon Books, 1992), ISBN 978-0-679-41604-3

Short Story Collections

• Fifth Sunday (University of Kentucky, Callaloo Fiction Series, 1985), ISBN 978-0-912759-06-7

As Editor

• The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), ISBN 978-0-14-310643-2
• The Best American Poetry 2000 (New York: Scribner, 2000), ISBN 978-0-7432-0033-2

External links

• The Rita Dove Homepage at University of Virginia, with resource listing of video, articles etc. Retrieved 2010-11-02
• Audio: Rita Dove at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2010: "How Does a Shadow Shine?". Retrieved 2010-11-02
• Poems by Rita Dove and biography at PoetryFoundation.org Retrieved 2010-11-02
• Interview: Rita Dove at the Academy of American Poets. Poems, audio, interviews. Retrieved 2010-11-02
• The New Yorker poem November 24, 2008 The Bridgetower By Rita Dove. Retrieved 2010-11-02
• Essays, poems, interview about Dove at Modern American Poetry University of Illinois. Retrieved 2010-11-02
• "Rita Dove on the Future of Literature". The Smithsonian, August 2010