Rita Dove Popular Books

Rita Dove Biography & Facts

Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first 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. 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 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. Early life Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, to Ray Dove, one of the first African-American chemists to work in the U.S. tire industry (as a 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. Later, Dove graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Miami University in 1973. From 1974 to 1975 she held a Fulbright Scholarship from University of Tübingen, Germany. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1977. Career Dove taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In May 1993 she was named United States Poet Laureate by the Librarian of Congress, an office she held until 1995. At the age of 40, Dove was the youngest person in the position and the first 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. 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.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 brought together writers to explore the African diaspora through the eyes of its artists.Dove was on the board of the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) (now "Association of Writers and Writing Programs") from 1985 to 1988, leading the organization as its president from 1986 to 1987. From 1994 to 2000, she was a senator (member of the governing board) of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa. From 2006 to 2012 she served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Since 1991, she has been on the jury of the annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards—from 1991 to 1996 together with Ashley Montagu and Henry Louis Gates; from 1997 to 2023 with Gates, Joyce Carol Oates, Simon Schama, Stephen Jay Gould (until his death in 2002) and Steven Pinker (who replaced Gould in 2002), and since 2023 with Pinker, Peter Ho Davies, Tiya Miles and Natasha Tretheway. Since 2023 she serves as vice president for literature at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In 2000 and 2001 Dove wrote a weekly column, "Poet's Choice", for The Washington Post. In the spring of 2018, Dove was named poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine. 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 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. Dove has published eleven 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). Her Collected Poems 1974–2004 was released by W. W. Norton in 2016; it carries an excerpt from President Barack Obama's 2011 National Medal of Arts commendation on its back cover. 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, 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. She also provided the texts for Pulitzer Prize winner Tania Leon's musical works "Singin' Sepia" (1996), "Reflections" (2006) and "The Crossing Choir" (forthcoming), among other collaborations with multiple composers, most recently on "A Standing Witness" with Richard Danielpour.Dove's most ambitious collection of poetry to date, Sonata Mulattica, was published in 2009; it received the 2010 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.Dove's 11th collection of poetry, Playlist for the Apocalypse, was published by 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."Dove edited The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry, published in 2011. The collection provoked heated controversy as some critics complained that she valued 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.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;.... Discover the Rita Dove popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rita Dove books.

Best Seller Rita Dove Books of 2024

  • I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You synopsis, comments

    I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

    Naomi Shihab Nye

    An awardwinning anthology of paired poems by men and women.In this insightful anthology, the editors grouped almost 200 poems into pairs to demonstrate the different ways in which ...

  • The Treatment of Race and Gender in Rita Dove synopsis, comments

    The Treatment of Race and Gender in Rita Dove

    Björn M. Itrich

    Traditional black literature since the 1960’s tends to operate according to the creed: “Black literature BY blacks, ABOUT blacks, directed TO blacks. ESSENTIAL black literature is ...

  • Third Rail synopsis, comments

    Third Rail

    Jonathan Wells

    "The poets who fill these pages have come to testify, to bear witness to the mysterious power of Rock and Roll. from the Foreword by Bono "The thread or the theme That holds this...

  • The Darker Face of the Earth synopsis, comments

    The Darker Face of the Earth

    Rita Dove

    Published to coincide with its British premiere at the Royal National Theatre, The Darker Face of the Earth is Rita Dove's first play. Set on a plantation in preCivil War South...

  • The Girls in Blue synopsis, comments

    The Girls in Blue

    Lily Baxter

    When her home is destroyed in a bombing raid over London, Miranda Beddoes is forced to take refuge with her grandparents down on the Dorset coast. With both her parents doing their...

  • The Treatment of Race and Gender in Rita Dove synopsis, comments

    The Treatment of Race and Gender in Rita Dove

    Björn M. Itrich

    Essay from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies Literature, grade: Distinction, University of Wales, Bangor (English Department), 0 entries in the ...

  • Rita Dove synopsis, comments

    Rita Dove

    Rita Dove

    'Thomas y Beulah', de la laureada Rita Dove, es un libro de poesía que, a diferencia de la mayoría de los poemarios contemporáneos, exige una lectura «en secuencia», como u...

  • The Courage to Write synopsis, comments

    The Courage to Write

    Ralph Keyes

    The Courage to Write is an invaluable book and essential reading for anyone who wishes to learn how to write well.Katherine Anne Porter called courage "the first essential" for a w...