Collected Poems: 1974–2004 - Softcover

Dove, Rita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393354938 ISBN 13: 9780393354935

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017

Synopsis

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 this title

From the Inside Flap:

Collected Poems documents the superb poetic accomplishment over the course of three decades of one of America's most extraordinary writers. It captures the evolution but also the originality of her unique understanding of the historical, cultural, and personal dimensions of our lives.  Representing the triumph of expressive virtuosity over the challenges of life and art, this volume is Dove's precious gift to us after a near-lifetime of heroic and skilled work as simultaneously a devoted craftsman and a devout prophet. -Arnold Rampersad

From the Back Cover:

Through works that blend beauty, lyricism, critique, and politics, Ms. Dove has illuminated American poetry and literature and cultivated popular interest in the arts. -U.S. President Barack Obama in his National Medal of Arts commendation

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0393354938
• ISBN 13: 9780393354935
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448