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On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Author: Rita Dove
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
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Our Price: $11.01
You Save: $ 1.94 ( 15% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Author: Rita Dove
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Average Customer Rating:
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On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780393320268
ISBN: 039332026X
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 96
Publication Date: 2000-04
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780393320268
ISBN: 039332026X
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 96
Publication Date: 2000-04
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
Editorial Review of On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems
If you find memoirs more immediate than contemporary poetry, novels more compelling, history more vivid, then you haven't read Rita Dove. A former poet laureate of the United States, Dove is at the height of her powers in On the Bus with Rosa Parks. Her range is extraordinary. The opening "Cameos" sequence reads like a compressed colloquial epic of one hard-up but lively family--Lucille with her "bright and bitter" eyes, her wandering husband, Joe, their bookish son and seven daughters ("their / names fantastic, myriad / as the points of a chandelier"). There are magnificent occasional pieces--"Incarnation in Phoenix" on breastfeeding a newborn ("I'm not ready for this motherhood stuff"); "Against Self-Pity" ("pure misery a luxury /one never learns to enjoy"); "The First Book" ("Dig in: / You'll never reach bottom"). "Rosa," the centerpiece of the title sequence, reads almost like haiku as Dove captures Rosa Parks's historic act of refusal in 12 taut lines.
And then there are poems that stand alone for their unique electrifying strangeness: "The Venus of Willendorf," in which Dove ponders the ancient sacred mystery of man's worship of the female body, and "Lady Freedom Among Us," in which Freedom is incarnated as a bag lady--"she who has brought mercy back into the streets / and will not retire politely to the potter's field."
Of the many notes that Dove hits in this volume, the most welcome is pure unadulterated delight, as in "Dawn Revisited": "Imagine you wake up / with a second chance..." Imagine: Dove has done the hard part. All we have to do is open this splendid volume, sit back, and enjoy the ride. --David Laskin
Customer Reviews of On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Joining Rita's Bus
Review: This collection of poems is a fun variety of rhythm, imagery and humour. I found this collection a great daily read.
The first set of poems, "Cameos" are wonderful snapshots of the African American community. Dove does something that is very difficult and takes on the voice of different generations and genders in the same family to let us see inside the group. July 1925 had a great story. "Night" had a great rhythm and "Lake Erie" had wonderful unusual imagery.
As the collection progresses we move to more stand alone poems but they are all there to create new voices. She does what a good poet wants and takes a common theme and makes it new. A perfect example is "Parlor." We are dealing with death but with a bit of humour in the background.
The later poems are from a series on civil rights and Rosa Parks and are just as intriguing as the earlier voices, the views of a culture different from my own.
I took away from this collection that it was not a book about civil rights as so many thought from the title. But that it is a book about "Riding the Bus with Rosa Parks" in the sense that the African American community, especially the female sector, want to join that tradition and to honor what it means to be a part of the sector of the community.
If you want to read a very talented poet then I strongly suggest this collection. As noted, it isn't a collection soley focusing on civil rights. It is an anthology of unique voices.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Don't judge a book by its title...
Review: At first glance, one may think this book to be a collection of poems dealing with the civil rights movement. Dove illustrates her poetic talent, however, by writing about the struggles in the lives of her fictional characters. In fact, the only references to Rosa Parks are in the chapter named after the book itself. But by looking beneath the surface of Dove's poems, it becomes clear to the reader why "On the Bus With Rosa Parks" is a very appropriate title. Rita Dove uses Rosa Parks as a sort of personification of the recurring themes in the poems. Rosa Parks represents hope, living life to its fullest, and the idea of ordinary people overcoming adversity to do something extraordinary. It's wrong to downplay this work and say Dove was too young to accurately illustrate Rosa Parks' effect on the Civil Rights Movement. For one thing, I think we all know of her significance, no matter what age or race we are. But also, a reader of this book needs to look past the title and see that this is not just about Rosa Parks, it outlines *human* struggle, not just African American struggle. I highly recommend it...
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: not her best work
Review: having read rita dove's selected poems, i know she has written good poems (the adolescence poems, in the old neighborhood, the thomas and beuleh poems), but these poems don't have the same quality of her previous works. the poems in this collection don't have the narrative quality that made thomas and beuleh so good. the cameo sequence of poems is simply a poet trying to be difficult or experimental but not succeeding. the political preachiness wears on the reader after a while.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Commerical Work[.]
Review: Here's a former poet, who has turned the corner -- producings works for mere commerical gain.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A gifted poet on autopilot
Review: Rita Dove continues to milk the cow of her racial specialness by writing about an era (or images of an era) she was too young in which to participate (as well as being too safely ensconced in the middle-class to feel its genuine horror). Thus her poems have all the touches of William Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility" but lack the immediacy of the real perils Rosa Parks and her comrades experienced. There is some brilliant writing here; but now the patina of political correctness is wearing thin. Ms. Dove, as all the Iowa City grads, has mastered that somber, priestly, and overly-dramatic voice common to poets who've take on the mantle of greatness and who presume to be the moral authorities in our lives by telling us "the truth" and all things that "truly matter". This book reads as if it's destined to be another book of the Bible, meant to last forever and meant to be the correct gloss on the African-American experience. Instead, its pendantic solemnity returns its focus over and over again to Ms. Dove's self-absorption and to the sad fact that she is, in the final analysis, a person removed from history (by class rather than race) and the mainstream of American life, black or white.
Review Summary: Joining Rita's Bus
Review: This collection of poems is a fun variety of rhythm, imagery and humour. I found this collection a great daily read.
The first set of poems, "Cameos" are wonderful snapshots of the African American community. Dove does something that is very difficult and takes on the voice of different generations and genders in the same family to let us see inside the group. July 1925 had a great story. "Night" had a great rhythm and "Lake Erie" had wonderful unusual imagery.
As the collection progresses we move to more stand alone poems but they are all there to create new voices. She does what a good poet wants and takes a common theme and makes it new. A perfect example is "Parlor." We are dealing with death but with a bit of humour in the background.
The later poems are from a series on civil rights and Rosa Parks and are just as intriguing as the earlier voices, the views of a culture different from my own.
I took away from this collection that it was not a book about civil rights as so many thought from the title. But that it is a book about "Riding the Bus with Rosa Parks" in the sense that the African American community, especially the female sector, want to join that tradition and to honor what it means to be a part of the sector of the community.
If you want to read a very talented poet then I strongly suggest this collection. As noted, it isn't a collection soley focusing on civil rights. It is an anthology of unique voices.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Don't judge a book by its title...
Review: At first glance, one may think this book to be a collection of poems dealing with the civil rights movement. Dove illustrates her poetic talent, however, by writing about the struggles in the lives of her fictional characters. In fact, the only references to Rosa Parks are in the chapter named after the book itself. But by looking beneath the surface of Dove's poems, it becomes clear to the reader why "On the Bus With Rosa Parks" is a very appropriate title. Rita Dove uses Rosa Parks as a sort of personification of the recurring themes in the poems. Rosa Parks represents hope, living life to its fullest, and the idea of ordinary people overcoming adversity to do something extraordinary. It's wrong to downplay this work and say Dove was too young to accurately illustrate Rosa Parks' effect on the Civil Rights Movement. For one thing, I think we all know of her significance, no matter what age or race we are. But also, a reader of this book needs to look past the title and see that this is not just about Rosa Parks, it outlines *human* struggle, not just African American struggle. I highly recommend it...
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: not her best work
Review: having read rita dove's selected poems, i know she has written good poems (the adolescence poems, in the old neighborhood, the thomas and beuleh poems), but these poems don't have the same quality of her previous works. the poems in this collection don't have the narrative quality that made thomas and beuleh so good. the cameo sequence of poems is simply a poet trying to be difficult or experimental but not succeeding. the political preachiness wears on the reader after a while.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Commerical Work[.]
Review: Here's a former poet, who has turned the corner -- producings works for mere commerical gain.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A gifted poet on autopilot
Review: Rita Dove continues to milk the cow of her racial specialness by writing about an era (or images of an era) she was too young in which to participate (as well as being too safely ensconced in the middle-class to feel its genuine horror). Thus her poems have all the touches of William Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility" but lack the immediacy of the real perils Rosa Parks and her comrades experienced. There is some brilliant writing here; but now the patina of political correctness is wearing thin. Ms. Dove, as all the Iowa City grads, has mastered that somber, priestly, and overly-dramatic voice common to poets who've take on the mantle of greatness and who presume to be the moral authorities in our lives by telling us "the truth" and all things that "truly matter". This book reads as if it's destined to be another book of the Bible, meant to last forever and meant to be the correct gloss on the African-American experience. Instead, its pendantic solemnity returns its focus over and over again to Ms. Dove's self-absorption and to the sad fact that she is, in the final analysis, a person removed from history (by class rather than race) and the mainstream of American life, black or white.