Rita Dove (1952–present) is one of the most accomplished poets of our time. An American poet and essayist, Dove was the first African American United States Poet Laureate (1993–1995) since the creation of the position in 1937. In 1987, Rita Dove was the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Dove has received many honors and awards and continues to write some of the most insightful political and personal poetry of the modern era.
Rita Dove’s Biography
Throughout her life, Rita Dove has received some of the greatest honors a poet can achieve during their lifetime. Dove is, however, a very down-to-earth person and comes from an everyday background.
Rita Dove’s early life
Rita Francis Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. Her parents, Ray Dove (one of the first Black chemists to work in the tire industry) and Elvira Hord, encouraged Dove’s creative pursuits and shared their love of reading with her. Due to her parent’s support, Dove, a self-proclaimed shy child, excelled in school and graduated as a Presidential Scholar. Dove received her B.A. in English from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Shortly after her graduation, she was named a Fulbright Scholar and received a full scholarship to study at Tübingen University in Germany.
In 1977, Rita Dove received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. On that occasion, Dove met German writer Fred Viebahn, and the couple married in 1979. In 1983, they had a daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn. Dove and Viebahn spent extensive periods of time in different countries, including Germany, Israel, and Ireland. They adore ballroom dancing and even have a studio at their house in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Fig. 1 - Poet Rita Dove received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2012.
Rita Dove’s career
Rita Dove made her literary debut in 1980 with her poetry collection, The Yellow House on the Corner. This book presented the world with Dove’s distinctive and unique writing style. In 1987, Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her most famous collection, Thomas and Beulah (1986), which is loosely based on the lives of her maternal grandparents. See below for a brief timeline of a few of Dove’s career successes:
1987: receives the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Thomas and Beulah.
1989: begins teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
1993–1995: serves as United States Poet Laureate. Dove was the first African American Poet Laureate in the United States and was also, at the time, the youngest poet ever appointed.
1993–2020: serves as the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
1999–2000: serves as Special Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in its bicentennial year.
2004–2006: serves as Poet Laureate of Virginia.
2017: receives NAACP Image Award as well as the Library of Congress award for her poetry collection Collected Poems: 1974–2004.
Dove has received many more honors and awards, including twenty-eight honorary Doctorate degrees, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a National Humanities Medal, and the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities.
Rita Dove today
Rita Dove and her husband, Fred Viebahn, now live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Dove has been a professor of English and Poetry since 1989. She has taught hundreds of students and continues to write poetry. Her most recent collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse, was published in 2021. Dove maintains a focus on the personal nature of teaching and writing. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she was known to invite students and professors to her home for poetry workshops, and she teaches with a special commitment to excellence and vigor that comes with a lifetime of artistry.
Additional Facts about Rita Dove
The following points highlight the impact that Dove has had on American poetics and the visibility of Black Americans:
Dove was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997. Her new book, entitled Playlist for the Apocalypse, has a section detailing her experience with this disease where she discusses how it impacted her life as a writer and mother.
Dove and her husband, Fred Viebahn, love ballroom dancing. This love of music and dancing is present in many of Dove’s poetry collections, including American Smooth (2004) and Playlist for the Apocalypse.
Dove is a professor at the University of Virginia, but she has also taught at the University of Arizona and has been a visiting writer at many other institutions of higher education.
Dove’s works changed the course of American writing. Her personal, lyric poems embody both the importance of political involvement, the personal nature of racism, and the experience of being Black in the United States. Her work does not shy away from the ugly history of racism in the U.S. and concentrates on healing from these wounds and moving on into a more equitable future.
Rita Dove’s Writing Style
Rita Dove’s writing style is personal, political, and intimate. Although she has published works in fiction and poetry, her focus remains on poetry. She primarily writes in free verse and has, on several occasions, written in narrative forms (see, for instance, Thomas and Beulah (1986)). Dove writes with vigor and uses sensory imagery and frequent symbolism to depict the experiences of African Americans in the American political landscape. However, she did not begin writing poems on the plight of African Americans until she was in graduate school at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
Once her book, The Yellow House on the Corner, was published, Dove began to employ a writing style that attempts to bring the political into a personal landscape. Her work concentrates on creative symbolism to depict difficult scenarios.
Dove has written narrative collections, such as Sonata Mulattica (2009), which is a true story about Black prodigal violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, who had a massive influence on the work of the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Dove’s distinctive writing style uses concise descriptions that make even the most abstract concept understandable.
Rita Dove’s Books
Below is a list of all the books Rita Dove has published to date. While she is primarily a poet, Dove has also published collections of essays and short stories, a play, and fiction.
| Genre | Year | Title | Publisher |
| Poetry collections | 1980 | The Yellow House on the Corner | Carnegie Mellon Press |
| 1983 | Museum | Carnegie Mellon Press |
| 1986 | Thomas and Beulah | Carnegie Mellon Press |
| 1989 | Grace Notes | W. W. Norton |
| 1993 | Selected Poems | Pantheon Press |
| 1995 | Mother Love | W. W. Norton |
| 1999 | On the Bus with Rosa Parks | W. W. Norton |
| 2004 | America Smooth |
| 2009 | Sonata Mulattica |
| 2016 | Collected Poems 1974–2004 |
| 2021 | Playlist for the Apocalypse |
| Essay collection | 1995 | The Poet’s World | The Library of Congress |
| Drama | 1994 | The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play in Fourteen Scenes | Story Line Press |
| Novel | 1992 | Through the Ivory Gate | Pantheon Press |
| Short story collection | 1985 | Fifth Sunday | University of Kentucky |
Rita Dove’s Poems
The selected poems listed below are works that have become staples in American education and/or are famous for their potency. You can find many recordings of Rita Dove reading her poems in the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress.
One of the ways to remember famous poetry is by memorizing the title and the first line of the poem. Often, when the poem flows well, it will be easier to remember other sections after the first line is already memorized.
| Title | Publication | Description |
| “Parsley” | 1983, Museum | “Parsley” is about the Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic in 1937. This poem remains one of Rita Dove’s most famous works because she read it at the White House. In the Parsley Massacre, the Dominican Republic’s president, Rafael Trujillo, in a move of anti-Black and anti-Haitian racism, massacred all those in the Dominican Republic who pronounced the word “parsley” with a French accent. |
| “American Smooth” | 2004, American Smooth | The eponymous poem of Dove’s collection American Smooth is a joyful poem about two people dancing and being so lost in the music that they don’t realize their feet have completely left the ground. |
| “Last Words” | 2021, The New Yorker | “Last Words” is about the concept of dying and coming to terms with it. The speaker references many ways to die and decides that they want death to come like life did, inconvenient and simple. |
While many more of Rita Dove’s poems could have been included in this list, the three listed above are some of her most famous. She has published her poetry on many different platforms, including her own poetry collections, newspapers, and magazines such as The New Yorker.
Fig. 2 - "American Smooth" centers around a dancing couple that gets caught up in the moment.
Rita Dove - Key Takeaways
- Rita Dove is a poet and author born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952.
- Dove went on to become the United States’ first African American Poet Laureate and has won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
- Dove is a lyric poet that concentrates on narrative poetry and uses symbolism and figurative language to make large concepts personal.
- Dove has written eleven collections of poetry. The most famous collection is Thomas and Beulah, while one of her most famous poems is “Parsley.”
- Dove is a professor of English and Creative writing at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives and works with her husband, Fred Viebahn.
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