Poetry Books
Selected Poems
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Rita Dove
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Rita Dove
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Selected Poems Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780679750802
ISBN: 0679750800
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1993-09-28
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1993-09-28
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780679750802
ISBN: 0679750800
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1993-09-28
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1993-09-28
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Selected Poems
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.
Customer Reviews of Selected Poems
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Rita Dove has a strong sense for narrative
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I like her personally, though...
Review: I have all the respect in the world for Rita Dove--she is probably the most active Poet Laureate we have ever had, and I love her ideas, but this poetry is just unreadable--inaccessible and coded.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful poems
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A rather uninspired collection
Review: 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.
Review Summary: Rita Dove has a strong sense for narrative
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I like her personally, though...
Review: I have all the respect in the world for Rita Dove--she is probably the most active Poet Laureate we have ever had, and I love her ideas, but this poetry is just unreadable--inaccessible and coded.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful poems
Review: 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.)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A rather uninspired collection
Review: 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.