The tango, for instance, is causing me trouble because it's a very dramatic enactment of human interaction, but I avoid recalling the traditional Addams Family stalking rhythm-I don't want that kind of farcical nonsense.
Could you say something along those lines about the forms of the dances and poetic forms as well?ĭove: The interesting thing is that though the dance poems are very musical, I'm trying to find a way to get at the essence of each dance without resorting to mere imitation, so it involves finding a different kind of rhythm. but the tango is giving me trouble.Īlexander: Certainly from your very extensive musical training and experience, you've talked about the relationship between musical measures and phrasing and poetic practice. I couldn't get them all in this time: There's a samba, a couple of fox-trots, and one long rumba for two voices. In fact, my new book is called American Smooth, and dance poems are scattered all through it. Rita Dove: There are more and more to come. There are, I believe, many of them, and more to come as well? Norton published her latest collection of poems, American Smooth, in September 2004.Įlizabeth Alexander: Let's start with your new dance poems. She is the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Among her many literary and academic honors are the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1997 Barnes & Noble Writers Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities (from Teresa Heinz), and the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton. She brought such life to the office that her term was extended, and she has continued to raise the profile of poetry in myriad ways. When Rita Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993–1995, she revolutionized the office by literally bringing "poetry to the people," in schools, in musical events, and in unusual public spaces. She is the author of a novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), a book of short stories Fifth Sunday (1985), many essays (some collected in The Poet's World, 1995), including a definitive essay on the work of Derek Walcott, and a play, The Darker Face of the Earth (1994), which has been produced to great acclaim in the United States and abroad. She has published eight books of poems, and her literary accomplishments extend beyond that form. The book was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In Thomas and Beulah, her third books of poems, Dove reveals her power as a narrative poet in the imaginative retelling of the story of her grandparents' courtship and subsequent life together. Rita Dove's first collection of poems, The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), heralded the arrival of a new voice in American letters.
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