Rita Dove

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Rita Dove
Dove in December 2017
Dove in December 2017
BornRita Frances Dove
(1952-08-28) August 28, 1952 (age 71)
Akron, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation
  • Poet
  • author
  • university professor
Education
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
Spouse
Fred Viebahn
​
(m. 1979)​
Children1

Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as

African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from 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 to 2000.[1] Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia[2] from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.[3]

Early life

Rita Dove was born in

Fulbright Scholarship from University of Tübingen, Germany. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa
in 1977.

Career

External videos
video icon C-SPAN Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, 15:43, C-SPAN[6]

Dove taught creative writing at

African American since the title was changed to Poet Laureate (Robert Hayden had served as the first non-white Consultant in Poetry from 1976 to 1978, and Gwendolyn Brooks had been the last Consultant in Poetry in 1985–86). Early in her tenure as poet laureate, Dove was featured by Bill Moyers in a one-hour interview on his PBS prime-time program Bill Moyers Journal.[8] Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020 and is now the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.[9]

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.[2] 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 brought together writers to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists.[10]

Dove was on the board of the

Natasha Tretheway.[11][12] Since 2023 she serves as vice president for literature at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[13]

In 2000 and 2001 Dove wrote a weekly column, "Poet's Choice", for The Washington Post.[14][15] In the spring of 2018, Dove was named poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine.[16] After writing nearly fifty columns in which she championed new American poetry, she resigned from the position in August 2019.

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

President Barack Obama's 2011 National Medal of Arts
commendation on its back cover.

Dove and then-national youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman at the "Furious Flower" gala in Washington, D.C., September 27, 2019

In 1994, she published the play The Darker Face of the Earth (revised stage version 1996), which premiered at the

Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, 1998, conducted by the composer). For "America's Millennium", the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Dove contributed — in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by John Williams' music — a poem to Steven Spielberg's documentary The Unfinished Journey.[17] She also provided the texts for Pulitzer Prize winner Tania Leon's musical works "Singin' Sepia" (1996),[18] "Reflections" (2006) [19] and "The Crossing Choir" (forthcoming),[20] among other collaborations with multiple composers, most recently on "A Standing Witness" with Richard Danielpour.[21]

Dove's most ambitious collection of poetry to date, Sonata Mulattica,

Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. 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.[23]

Dove's 11th collection of poetry, Playlist for the Apocalypse,

W. W. Norton in August 2021. New York Times critic Dwight Garner called it "among her best", "poems that are by turns delicate, witty and audacious."[25]

Dove edited The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry, published in 2011.

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.[28]

As Dove explained in her foreword and in media interviews, she had originally selected works by Plath, Ginsberg and Brown but these as well as some other poets were omitted against her editorial wishes; their contributions had to be removed from print-ready copy at the very last minute because their publisher forbade their inclusion due to a disagreement with

Penguin over permission fees. Critic Helen Vendler condemned Dove's choices, asking "why are we being asked to sample so many poets of little or no lasting value?"[29] Dove defended her editorial work vigorously in her response to Vendler in The New York Review of Books,[30] as well as in wide-ranging interviews with The Writer's Chronicle,[31] with poet Jericho Brown on the Best American Poetry website,[32] and with Bill Moyers on his public television show Moyers & Company.[33] The Boston Review continued the discussion from different angles with an aggressive attack by scholar Marjorie Perloff[34] and a spirited counter-attack by poet and scholar Evie Shockley, who took on both Vendler and Perloff.[35]

Dove published a number of books in foreign translations, among them two into German, two into Chinese, three into Spanish, and one each into Norwegian, Macedonian, Italian, French, Dutch and Hebrew, plus numerous translations in foreign magazines. One of her earliest foreign translations was into French by Paol Keineg and published in the Breton review "Bretagnes" in 1976.[36]

The annual "Rita Dove Poetry Award" was established by Salem College Center for Women Writers in 2004. The documentary film Rita Dove: An American Poet by Eduardo Montes-Bradley premiered at the Paramount Theater on January 31, 2014.[37][38]

In 2019, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth, Dove put the African-American poetic reception of Whitman into perspective at a poetry festival in Bogotá, Colombia, during a round-table session with Robert Pinsky.[39]

Awards and honors

Poet Laureate Rita Dove's definition of a library at the entrance to the Maine State Library in Augusta, Maine. Dove's definition reads "The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.".

Besides her Pulitzer Prize, Dove has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them 29 honorary doctorates – most recently, in 2018, from

Washington & Lee University, Howard University, the Pratt Institute, Skidmore College and Duke University.[48]

Dove received the Golden Plate Award of the

Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for lifetime achievement)[67][circular reference],[68] the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal[69] from Harvard University and the Langston Hughes Medal[70]
from City College of New York.

In 2021, Dove received the gold medal in poetry

W.S. Merwin, Mark Strand and Louise Glück
.

In 2022, an official portrait of Dove by photographer Sanjay Suchak, commissioned by the University of Virginia, was unveiled and is prominently displayed in the front room of the university's historic Pavilion VII (Colonnade Club) on the West Lawn.[72] Also in 2022, she won the Library of Virginia Poetry Award for Playlist for the Apocalypse [2] and received two more lifetime achievement recognitions: a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation [73] and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress.[74]

On Nov. 15, 2023, during the 74th

Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as only the fourth poet in this lifetime achievement category, after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1994, Adrienne Rich in 2006 and John Ashbery in 2011. [75] This was followed by an Academy of American Poets Leadership Award [76] and the Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature from Mercer University [77]
in 2024.

Dove is a member of the

PEN American Center. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1991,[80] and in 2018 she was named one of the Library of Virginia's Virginia Women in History.[81]

Personal life

Dove married Fred Viebahn,

Charlottesville, Virginia.[86]

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections
Anthologies (edited)

Novels

Short fiction

Drama

Essays

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


Scholarly books on Dove's work

  • Steffen, Therese. Crossing Color: Transcultural Space and Place in Rita Dove's Poetry, Fiction, and Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Ingersoll, Earl G., ed. Conversations with Rita Dove. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003
  • Pereira, Malin. Rita Dove's Cosmopolitanism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
  • Righelato, Pat. Understanding Rita Dove. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.
  • Roy, Lekha. Towards Post-Blackness. A Critical Study of Rita Dove's Poetry. New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2023.


Various other secondary literature (incomplete)

  • Erickson, Peter. "Rita Dove's Shakespeares." In Marianne Novy (ed.), Transforming Shakespeare. New York: St. Martin's, 1999.
  • Harrington, Walt, "The Shape of Her Dreaming: Rita Dove Writes a Poem." In Intimate Journalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997
  • Keller, Lynn. "Sequences Testifying for 'Nobodies': Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah and Brenda Marie Osbey's Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman." In Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
  • McDowell, Robert. "The Assembling Vision of Rita Dove." In James McCorkle (ed.), Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1990.
  • Meitner, Erika. "On Rita Dove." In Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker (eds), Women Poets on Mentorship. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008
  • Shoptaw, John. "Segregated Lives: Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah." In Henry Louis Gates, Jr (ed.), Reading Black, Reading Feminist. London: Penguin, 1990
  • Galgano, Andrea. "Rita Dove. La grazia esatta" in Frontiera di Pagine II, pp. 723–734. Roma: Aracne, 2017
  • Apolloni, Ag. Poetry is a kind of dance (Interview with Rita Dove). Symbol, No 9/2017. Link: https://www.eurozine.com/poetry-is-a-kind-of-dance/
  • Young, Kevin. "The Art of Poetry. No. 113." Interview with Rita Dove. In The Paris Review No 243 (Spring 2023). pp. 114-148.


Very incomplete list of individual poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
The Bridgetower 2008 Dove, Rita (November 24, 2008). "The Bridgetower". The New Yorker. 84 (38): 90–91.
Last words 2021 Dove, Rita (January 25, 2021). "Last words". The New Yorker. 96 (45): 38.
Hattie McDaniel arrives at the Coconut Grove 2022 Dove, Rita (August 29, 2022). "Hattie McDaniel arrives at the Coconut Grove". The New Yorker. 98 (26): 24–25.


References

  1. ^ "Rita Dove". Poetry Foundation. March 14, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Virginia - State Poet Laureate (State Poets Laureate of the United States, Main Reading Room, Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  3. ^ "Rita Dove | Creative Writing Program".
  4. ^ Rita Dove (2008). "Comprehensive Biography of Rita Dove". University of Virginia. Retrieved January 1, 2009.
  5. American Academy of Achievement
    .
  6. ^ "Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove". C-SPAN. March 21, 2017. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  7. ^ Library of Congress Online resources, with links to works, commentary and recorded works.
  8. ^ "Poet Laureate Rita Dove - BillMoyers.com". Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  9. ^ "Department of English".
  10. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions: United States Poets Laureate - Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides, and Finding Aids (Virtual Programs&Services, Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  11. ^ "Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards - The 82nd Annual". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  12. ^ https://www.anisfield-wolf.org/about/#the-jury
  13. ^ https://uva.theopenscholar.com/rita-dove/news/rita-dove-joins-board-american-academy-arts-and-letters
  14. ^ [1][dead link]
  15. ^ "Today on page 12 of Book World ..." The Washington Post. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  16. ^ Fitzgerald, Brendan (May 25, 2018), "NYT Magazine's Rita Dove on What Poetry Might Grant Unsuspecting News Readers", Columbia Journalism Review (CJR.org). Retrieved November 5, 2018.
  17. YouTube
  18. ^ "Singin' Sepia, Tania León".
  19. ^ [://https://www.tanialeon.com/catalogue "List of Works"], tanialeon.com.
  20. ^ "Tania León | Kennedy Center".
  21. ^ "Special Project: A Standing Witness, by Richard Danielpour & Rita Dove". Dworkin & Company.
  22. ^ May, Lori A. (July 11, 2013). "Poets' Quarterly: Sonata Mulattica: Rita Dove's Juggling Act". Poetsquarterly.com. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
  23. ^ Mark Doty, "The Silenced Violin", O, The Oprah Magazine, April 2009.
  24. ^ "Playlist for the Apocalypse".
  25. ^ Garner, Dwight (August 9, 2021). "In 'Playlist for the Apocalypse,' the Weight of American History and of Mortality". The New York Times.
  26. ^ Brown, Jeffrey (December 16, 2011). "In Anthology, Rita Dove Connects American Poets' Intergenerational Conversations". PBS NewsHour. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Retrieved December 17, 2011.
  27. ^ Brooks, Mary Jo (December 16, 2011). "Friday on the NewsHour: Rita Dove". MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Retrieved December 17, 2011.
  28. ^ Flood, Alison (December 22, 2011). "Poetry anthology sparks race row". The Guardian.
  29. ^ Vendler, Helen (November 24, 2011). "Are These the Poems to Remember?". The New York Review of Books.
  30. ^ Dove, Rita (December 22, 2011). "Defending An Anthology". The New York Review of Books.
  31. ^ "Editing the Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry: An Interview with Rita Dove" (PDF). The Writer's Chronicle. December 2011.
  32. ^ "Until the Fulcrum Tips: A Conversation with Rita Dove and Jericho Brown".
  33. ^ "Rita Dove on the Power of Poetry". Moyers. February 17, 2012.
  34. ^ "Poetry on the Brink". Boston Review. May 18, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
  35. ^ Shockley, Evie (June 6, 2013). "Shifting the (Im)balance: Race and the Poetry Canon". Boston Review. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
  36. ^ "Bretagnes", p. 37-39, Morlaix.
  37. ^ David A. Maurer, "New documentary about Rita Dove explores music, family and other forces that shaped a poet". The Daily Progress. January 31, 2014.
  38. ^ Lawrence A. Garretson, "Rita Dove talks about a new film on her life and work", C-Ville, January 29, 2014.
  39. ^ "Rita Dove on Walt Whitman (Sept. 2019)". Youtube video".
  40. ^ Mitchell, Stephanie (May 24, 2018). "Seven Receive Honorary Degrees." News.Harvard.edu. Retrieved November 5, 2018.
  41. ^ "'Hold On To Your Dreams with Dignity': Poet Rita Dove Tells Smith Graduates" (May 20, 2018) Smith.e. Retrieved November 5, 2018.
  42. ^ Rosenfeld, Benjamin (December 16, 2018), "Winter commencement speakers emphasize adaptability, paying it forward", The Michigan Daily.
  43. ^ "A master of poetry comes home".
  44. ^ "Yale awards 12 honorary degrees at 2014 graduation". May 19, 2014. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  45. YouTube
  46. YouTube
  47. ^ "Rita Dove to Grads: 'Instead of Advice, I Will Give You Wishes'". Time. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  48. ^ "People", Department of English, University of Virginia.
  49. American Academy of Achievement
    .
  50. ^ "2019 Summit Highlights Photo". 2019. Rita Dove, former United States Poet Laureate, presenting the Golden Plate Award to Nadia Murad, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, during the Banquet of the Golden Plate Award gala at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City.
  51. YouTube
  52. ^ "The Heinz Awards :: Rita Dove". www.heinzawards.net. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  53. ^ "Past Fellows - Yale Chubb Fellowship". chubbfellowship.org. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  54. ^ ""U.Va.'s Rita Dove to Receive Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award Oct. 18", UVa Today". Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  55. ^ "Fulbright.org". Fulbright.org. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  56. ^ "2009 - Rita Dove". premiocapri.com. Premio Capri – Capri Awards. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  57. ^ "MONDAY: President Obama to Award 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal". The White House. February 10, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  58. ^ "National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medals announced", Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2012.
  59. YouTube
    . The Obama White House, February 13, 2012.
  60. ^ "Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize". www.weinsteinpoetryprize.org. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  61. ^ "Poet Rita Dove named OSU's 2016 Stone Award winner", Oregon State University Press Release, August 13, 2015.
  62. ^ Krug, Nora (October 6, 2016). "2016 National Book Awards: Colson Whitehead, Kate DiCamillo among finalists". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 11, 2023. Retrieved December 11, 2023.
  63. ^ Treadway, Sandra Gioia, "Dove, Shetterly, Brown, and Baldacci Receive Literary Awards: 2017 recipients honored at the Library of Virginia", Library of Virginia.
  64. ^ "Rita Dove receives the Callaloo Lifetime Achievement Award". YouTube. October 16, 2017.
  65. ^ "Rita Dove". Kenyon Reiew.
  66. ^ "Rita Dove Honored with 2019 Wallace Stevens Award by Harriet Staff". Poetry Foundation. May 25, 2021.
  67. Hurston-Wright Legacy Award#North Star Award
  68. ^ "Merit Awards".
  69. ^ "Queen Latifah, Rita Dove, and Robert Smith Receive Annual W. E. B. Du Bois Medal | News | the Harvard Crimson".
  70. ^ "Pulitzer Prize poet Rita Dove wins CCNY's Langston Hughes Medal". The City University of New York. June 20, 2019.
  71. ^ "Yehudi Wyner, Rita Dove, and Phong Bui Receive Highest Honors – American Academy of Arts and Letters".
  72. ^ Bromley, Anne E. (April 15, 2022). "UVA Adds Dove Portrait and Bus Stop Marker to Honor Recent History". UVA Today.
  73. ^ "Poetry Foundation Makes History Honoring 2022 Pegasus Awardees". Poetry Foundation. September 8, 2022.
  74. ^ "Library of Congress Awards Bobbitt Poetry Prizes to Rita Dove and Heid e. Erdrich". Library of Congress. November 15, 2022.
  75. National Book Awards . Archived
    from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved December 11, 2023.
  76. ^ https://poets.org/academy-american-poets-presented-leadership-awards-poetry-advocates-launching-its-ninetieth
  77. ^ https://kingcenter.mercer.edu/thomas-robinson-prize
  78. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  79. ^ https://uva.theopenscholar.com/rita-dove/news/rita-dove-joins-board-american-academy-arts-and-letters
  80. ^ "ODJFS Online - SEARCH the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame". www.odjfs.state.oh.us. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  81. ^ "Virginia Women in History 2018 Rita Dove". www.lva.virginia.gov. June 30, 2016. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  82. ^ "Fred Viebahn". The Open Sscholar.
  83. ^ "Rita Dove | Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing".
  84. ^ "Aviva Dove-Viebahn | iSearch".
  85. ^ Forsicht, "Rita and Fred dancing", YouTube.
  86. ^ "Rita Dove". The Open Scholar. May 3, 2023.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Rita Dove.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rita_Dove&oldid=1217879011"