- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (Sep 28 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679750800
- ISBN-13: 978-0679750802
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1.4 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,462,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Remarkable . . . a poet of dramatic force." --The New York Review of Books
"Consistently accomplished . . . Dove's is a brilliant mind that seeks for itself the widest possible play, an ever-expanding range of reference, the most acute distinctions, and the most subtle shadings of meaning. . . . Her is a major career." --Arnold Rampersad, Callaloo
"Dove's poems, rich with elegant phrasing and Southern spice, blast tradition by pulling readers into other lives and then dazzle them with an often startling mastery of language." --Boston Globe
"Rita Dove . . . is a devoted and subtle storyteller [whose] gifts are evoking, and sometimes exalting, the everyday moments we live by but may neglect or forget, the music of her words issuing a message of uncanny integrity and calm. Though often writing of private experience (mothering, mourning death, watching rain), she never seems to lose sight of the world beyond." --Newsweek
"Consistently accomplished . . . Dove's is a brilliant mind that seeks for itself the widest possible play, an ever-expanding range of reference, the most acute distinctions, and the most subtle shadings of meaning. . . . Her is a major career." --Arnold Rampersad, Callaloo
"Dove's poems, rich with elegant phrasing and Southern spice, blast tradition by pulling readers into other lives and then dazzle them with an often startling mastery of language." --Boston Globe
"Rita Dove . . . is a devoted and subtle storyteller [whose] gifts are evoking, and sometimes exalting, the everyday moments we live by but may neglect or forget, the music of her words issuing a message of uncanny integrity and calm. Though often writing of private experience (mothering, mourning death, watching rain), she never seems to lose sight of the world beyond." --Newsweek
Book Description
Here in one volume is a selection of the extraordinary poems of Rita Dove, who, as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, brought poetry into the lives of millions of people. Along with a new introduction and poem, Selected Poems comprises Dove's collections The Yellow House on the Corner, which includes a group of poems devoted to the themes of slavery and freedom; Museum, intimate ruminations on home and the world; and finally, Thomas and Beulah, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, a verse cycle loosely based on her grandparents' lives. Precisely yet intensely felt, resonant with the voices of ordinary people, Rita Dove's Selected Poems is marked by lyric intensity and compassionate storytelling.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful poems,
By
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Rita Dove's poetry is challenging: lyric, attentive, sure; yet it works in quieter veins than many more exhibitionist poets of the past thirty years. In the volumes collected in this "Selected Poems" Dove explores race, domesticity, history. The single most impressive featis her collection *Thomas and Beulah* which consists of two long sets of lyric poems which, combined, narrate a story (of her grandparents, the Thomas and Beulah of the title) and create a drama -- since the way in which Thomas sees things, in his half of the volume, is utterly different from the way in which Beulah sees things. What is most surprising is how these two people can live together, but in such different worlds. Ther is both strength and delicacy in these poems, and Beulah in particular emerges as one of the more significant figures in contempoary literature.(Dove's more recent works are also rich, and her "Mother Love" continues to explore, in a new way, the richness of family in America -- this time through a series of inventive sonnets, no two of which use the same sonnet form.)
2.0 out of 5 stars
A rather uninspired collection,
By A Customer
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Ms. Dove has been praised to the skies for her poetic vision, but one wonders just how far she would have gotten had she not emerged in the 1980s at the beginning of the Political Correctness Era (which continues to this day). Her writing is calculated for the highest drama, but hardly rises above the mundane ... and the fact is, she is no longer part of a generation of African Americans who have suffered at the hands of white civilization. She's wealthy, articulate ... and I didn't believe the suffering in these poems. Like a lot of Iowa City MFA graduates, she's like a fabulously muscled strongman in a gym lifting little tiny weights and making a lot of noise doing so. I'm done with Political Correctness, I'm done with Rita Dove.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful poems,
By HuckVT - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Rita Dove's poetry is challenging: lyric, attentive, sure; yet it works in quieter veins than many more exhibitionist poets of the past thirty years. In the volumes collected in this "Selected Poems" Dove explores race, domesticity, history. The single most impressive featis her collection *Thomas and Beulah* which consists of two long sets of lyric poems which, combined, narrate a story (of her grandparents, the Thomas and Beulah of the title) and create a drama -- since the way in which Thomas sees things, in his half of the volume, is utterly different from the way in which Beulah sees things. What is most surprising is how these two people can live together, but in such different worlds. Ther is both strength and delicacy in these poems, and Beulah in particular emerges as one of the more significant figures in contempoary literature.(Dove's more recent works are also rich, and her "Mother Love" continues to explore, in a new way, the richness of family in America -- this time through a series of inventive sonnets, no two of which use the same sonnet form.) 3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rita Dove has a strong sense for narrative,
By Anthony Marray "amarrayw" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
What I love about Rita Dove's work is that she gives her poems a sense of narrative. It's easy to see why when you consider her background in writing fiction. She is influenced by her desire to give her poetry a self contained atmosphere that you see in fiction. I disagree with readers who think of her work as too cryptic. You really can't expect to fully understand her poems in one reading. You have to stand back (in a way) and think about her imagery and its connection to the narrative (best example to see this would be her work from Thomas and Beulah - which won the Pulitzer).I would recommend also reading "Conversations with Rita Dove" where she gives insight into how she approaches writing poetry and fiction.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rita Dove's Selected Poems,
By meretuti - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
I learned of her by watching her get an award recently from president Barack Obama at the White House. It takes a while to get into her poetry. Her later works impressed me most. She is well worth reading.
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