Collected Poems: 1974-2004

Rita Dove

$39.95

Publication Date: May 17th, 2016

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN:

9780393285949

Pages:

448

Description

Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award
Finalist for the 2017 NAACP Image Award

Three decades of powerful lyric poetry from a virtuoso of the English language in one unabridged volume.

Rita Dove’s Collected Poems 1974–2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove’s fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America’s kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove’s mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the “precise, singing lines” for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove “has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental” (Poetry magazine).

About the Author

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. Her recent works include Playlist for the Apocalypse, Sonata Mulattica, and the National Book Award-shortlisted Collected Poems: 1974-2004. In 2021 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives in Charlottesville, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.

Praise for Collected Poems: 1974-2004

To read the poems of Rita Dove, to go where they take you, is to follow her deeply into a series of themes and their subsets: African-Americans in history and right now, ideas of indenture and independence, sex, travel, language (she compares commas to “miniature scythes”), family, motherhood, roomy adult love and whatever is coming out of the radio. . . . Ms. Dove’s poems have earthiness, originality, power and range.
— Dwight Garner - New York Times

Reminds readers why she is one of the nation’s most respected literary figures. . . . Essential.
— Washington Post

This is an absolutely astounding body of work. . . . Few
contemporary poets are this capacious, this capable, this serious and this
pleasurable to read. . . . The lyric beauty of Dove's poems makes them unforgettable;
their deep knowledge of history and its ongoing consequences makes them
permanent.
— Los Angeles Times

Dove gracefully reminds us why so many honors
are hers. Read every word she gives.
— The Rumpus

This substantive and enriching decades-spanning
volume charts the work of Dove as she forged her legacy from a sharp,
unflinching eye that skillfully turned history into collective memory. . . . Through her alluring
language, Dove has long made the exceedingly difficult seem effortless; each
poem here is a testament to her brilliance.
— Publishers Weekly