American Smooth: Poems - Hardcover

Dove, Rita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393059871 ISBN 13: 9780393059878

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2004

Synopsis

A new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate celebrates America's cultural heritage with pieces about such topics as World War I's African-American jazz band, a Harlem girl's examination of adult flirting behaviors, and the first African-American Oscar winner. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

From Publishers Weekly:

This substantial eighth collection from the former U.S. poet laureate recaps almost all of Dove's various projects and roles. The Ohio-born, Virginia-based poet made her name (and landed a Pulitzer Prize) with the sparsely wrought storytelling verse of Thomas and Beulah (1986). Dove displays her vivid narrative gifts and the formal versatility that enables them in "Not Welcome Here," a sequence about black American soldiers (and soldier-musicians) in the First World War; the sequence may be her strongest work in 10 years. Dove's public presence as laureate and educator—highlighted in On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999)—informs the very accessible short poems that begin and end the volume, some of them based on dance steps or musical forms ("Fox Trot," "Lullaby," blues); several may be intended for young audiences ("Count to Ten and We'll Be There"). Short-lined poems such as "Soprano," meanwhile, revive the gift for freestanding, magazine-friendly lyric Dove showed in Grace Notes (1989), while work addressed to her daughter recalls Dove's previous depictions of mothers in myth (the Demeter and Persephone of Mother Love) and autobiographical fact. Though she claims (in "Brown"), "I prefer grand entrances," her most attractive work has been terse and subtle, almost photographic in its poise and reserve, never saying more than she means: the best of her new work returns to those familiar virtues.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393059871
• ISBN 13: 9780393059878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 143