Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series) - Softcover

Dove, Rita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887480217 ISBN 13: 9780887480218

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1986

Synopsis

A collection of poetry by Rita Dove.

About this title

Review

The poems in this unusual book tell a story, forming a narrative almost like a realistic novel. Read in sequence as intended, they tell of the lives of a married black couple (not unlike Dove's own grandparents) from the early part of the century until their deaths in the 1960s, a period that spans the great migration of blacks from rural south to urban north. But this is merely the social backdrop to the story of a marriage. Two separate sequences offer two views of the couple's lives: the first, "Mandolin," consists of 23 poems giving Thomas's side, and "Canary in Bloom" gives Beulah's in 21 poems. Together they paint a detailed, poetically dense portrait of two lives in all their frailty, dignity and complexity. The collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987.

Review

A remarkable book. . . . Dove has planed away unnecessary matter: pure shapes, her poems exhibit the thrift that Yeats called the sign of a perfected manner. -- New York Review of Books

Edition details

• Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887480217
• ISBN 13: 9780887480218
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80