Rita Dove

Biography

• Born Aug. 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio• Presidential Scholar upon graduating High

School• Has attended Miami University,

Universität Tübingen, and the University of Iowa

• Currently teaches English at the University of Virginia

• Poet Laureate of United States (1993-1995)

Dove’s Grandparents

• The characters Thomas and Beulah are based largely on Dove’s maternal grandparents, Thomas and Gergianna. While some of the events are fictionalized, others are based on historical events.

Dove with her mother and father

Subjects

• History!• Growing up• Relationships• Music• Ballroom Dancing• Myth

Form

• Lyric Poetry• Restricted, economic use of language• Fragmentation especially through free

modifiers, absolute phrases, verb tense shifts• Ellipsis omission of one or more words

which must be supplied by the reader. (Example: “The Satisfaction Coal Company”)

• Musicality assonance, consonance, alliteration, not much rhyming

http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/art-19447

Motifs and Themes in Thomas and Beulah

• Music grief, guilt• Color non-racial• Transportation movement, transition• Geometric shapes (i.e. circles, lines)

perpetual flux• Nature possibilities, freedom from society

• Gender• Guilt• Dissatisfaction

School

• Typically grouped with African-American poets and women poets for obvious reasons.

• Rita Dove’s poetry defies being placed in either of these schools.

• Imagist, Modernist

Sources

http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/home.htmlhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rita-dovehttp://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/dov0bio-1www.jstor.org.clark.up.edu/stable/2904035? http://0-www.jstor.org.clark.up.edu/stable/pdfplus/20115428.pdf?acceptTC=

true