Rita Dove

Many of my favorite collections bundled together in one great book. Dove's poems blend the personal with the historical showing us pivotal moments, injustices endured with courage and intelligence, through the concrete examples from dusting, to cooking, to building zeppelins, to a company picnic to war on the other side of the ocean. Well crafted but what always grabs me by the throat in Dove's poem is the persona, speakers who take us inside the mind whose day to day being is constantly show more shaping and being shaped by history. show less

This is not my first reading and it won't be my last. Thomas and Beulah is a great love letter from the poet to her grandparents, and whether or not the stories contained are exact they provide the kind of truth that only a poet can give.

Splitting the collection into two strong Points of View, shows art dealing with opposites, male/female, light/dark, black/white -- the poems start in a place that feel deeply personal. But the great poems that start with the personal, by being specific touch show more on something revealing about their culture and the history. This collection has much to teach about the Northern Migration and the effects of race, economics, labor and segregation on the psyche. Worth multiple reads. show less

An excellent anthology of American poetry of the 20th century. Rita Dove has pulled together old and new and brought forth a diverse collection of American voices.

I'm comparing this to two other American collections that I read which were both released in the first half of the 20th century--A Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry (1944) edited by Conrad Aiken and The New Pocket Anthology of Amerian Verse edited by Oscar Williams (1955). Those were books of their time. While both show more focused on all centuries of American poetry--many voices were missing and the voices that were left were white, mainly male, and frankly represented our pull from European and British shores. I still liked those books--and when you hit Whitman --wow, America starts to shine.

This book rectifies the missing by presenting the beauty of the true America which is made up of many voices with different experiences. This is a wonderfully done anthology. I could turn to random pages 1,000 times and still find beauty and something new. So many names in this anthology to read more of and learn about. All kinds of experiences contained-- African, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous voices, male, female, and LGBTQ. This is the America I love. show less

Poetry's not my "go-to" genre unless it's accompanied by a 2x4 whacked against my head to help me uncover the underlying message. But maybe I'm not sampling the good stuff. Reading Rita Dove was like growing up on Two Buck Chuck and suddenly winning an all-expenses vacation to Napa Valley. Show me someone else writing:

"Who are these children?
Who had them and with whom?
Through the general coffee tones
the shamed genetics cut a creamy swathe.
Cherokee's burnt umber transposed
onto generous lips, show more a glance flares gray
above the crushed nose we label
Anonymous African: It's all here,
the beautiful geometry of Mendel's peas
and their grim logic--"

I read most of my books from the library. This is a purchase because I keep coming back to it. Powerful! show less