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Rita Dove (b. 1952)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=188

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Rita Dove including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dove/dove.htm

This link connects you to the Modern American Poetry site, edited by Professor Cary Nelson at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Here you will find an exhibit of secondary criticism, bibliographic information, and external links on Rita Dove.

BIOGRAPHY

Born and raised in Akron Ohio, Rita Dove grew up in an African American middle-class family headed by her father who worked as a research chemist in the Akron tire industry. In 1970, Dove received a Presidential Scholar award to study at Miami University, where she later graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1973. Following college, Dove received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue two semesters of advanced study at the Universtät Tübingen in Germany, where she met and married the German writer Fred Viebahn. Returning to the United States, Dove received an M.F.A. from the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. Her first collection of poetry was entitled The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), followed by Museum (1983). With her next volume of verse Thomas and Beulah (1986), Dove became the second African American poet, after Gwendolyn Brooks, to win a Pulitzer Prize. Her subsequent volumes have included Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), as well as a book of short stories Fifth Sunday (1985) and a novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), plus a book of essays entitled The Poet's World (1995). Her 1996 play The Darker Face of the Earth premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. and the Royal National Theatre in London. She also writes a column entitled "Poet's Choice" for The Washington Post. In 1993, Rita Dove was the first African American to be named as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant in Poetry at the Library Congress. Over the course of her career, Rita Dove has received numerous honorary doctorates as well as several prizes. She is currently the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Carlisle, Theodora. "Reading the Scars: Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth." African American Review. 34(1):135-50. 2000 Spring.

Cavalieri, Grace. "Rita Dove: An Interview." American Poetry Review. 24(2):11-15. 1995 Mar-Apr.

Pereira, Malin. "An Interview with Rita Dove." Contemporary Literature. 40(2):183-213. 1999 Summer.

Steffen, Therese. Crossing Color: Transcultural Space and Place in Rita Dove's Poetry, Fiction, and Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

—. "Rooted Displacement in Form: Rita Dove's Sonnet Cycle Mother Love." The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry. Ed. Joanne V. Gabbin. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia: 1999. 60-76.

Vendler, Helen Hennessey. The Given and the Made: Recent American Poets. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER