Rita Dove

 Rita Dove

Rita Dove’s Biography:

Mrs. Rita Dove was born in the city of Akron, Ohio in 1952. Rita attended Miami University of Ohio, and the University of Iowa, where she earned her creative writing MFA in 1977. In 1987, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her third collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah. From 1993 to 1995, she served as U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress. She is also an author of a novel, a book of short stories, essays, and numerous volumes of poetry, among them the National Book Award finalist and NAACP Image Award winner. Rita also edited The Best American Poetry 2000 and the Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry in 2011. Dove wrote poetry columns for the New York Times Magazine from 2018 to 2019 and The Washington Post from 2000 to 2002. Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, was premiered by Cynthia Haymon with the Boston Symphony in 1998, and her song sequence A Standing Witness, 14 poems with music by Richard Danielpour, was sung by Susan Graham with the Copland House musicians at the Kennedy Center, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and other venues in 2021 and 2022.


One of my favorite poems:

Adolescence-II

Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round
As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines.
They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the washbowl,

One on the bathtub edge; one leans against the door.
“Can you feel it yet?” they whisper.
I don’t know what to say, again. They chuckle,

Patting their sleek bodies with their hands.
“Well, maybe next time.” And they rise,
Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight,

And vanish. I clutch at the ragged holes
They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness.
Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue.

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