Rita Dove
American Smooth
Poems
"Rita Dove pulls the ultimate dance
trick: she makes it look easy."
—New York Times Book Review
AN OCCASION to celebrate: a new collection by the
Pulitizer Prize–winning, former Poet Laureate, her
first since On the Bus with Rosa Parks. With the grace of
an Astaire, Rita Dove's magnificent poems pay homage
to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritage—from the
glorious shimmer of an operatic soprano to Bessie
Smith's mournful wail; from paradise lost to angel
food cake; from hotshots at the local shooting range
to the Negro jazz band in World War I whose music
conquered Europe before the Allied advance. Like the
ballroom-dancing couple of the title poem, smiling
and making the difficult seem effortless, Dove
explores the shifting surfaces between perception and
intimation.
"A bravura performance by an incredibly accomplished
poet."—Kansas City Star
"Dove, with her precise, singing lines, eliminates
the impure, the wrong notes, the clutter and the waste
to reach straight to the heart of experiences so that
emotion rings true."—Washington Post Book World
RITA DOVE , Commonwealth Professor of
English at the University of Virginia, lives in
Charlottesville.
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