8/8/2023 0 Comments Fun facts about rita dove![]() ![]() I was looking for love and adventure and the drama of life, and I found all of this in Rita Dove’s poetry, particularly “Planning the Perfect Evening,” which from a young woman’s perspective romances the event itself as much as the object of her desire, and does so in such a way as to elevate the courtship in the poem to a level of elegance. When I think back to reading Rita Dove and the others in Morrow Anthology, they were the poets I wanted to emulate, to hang out with at a party, and to talk with about ideas, life, and poetry. ![]() Each poet is ready when he or she is ready. And, yes, this mythical man turned the boat around, time after time, even when I could see the shore, and on a few occasions when we had nearly run ashore and saw the anchor in mid-air before the gatekeeper turned the boat around. But the gatekeeper had a thousand questions at his disposal before you could get near the Island of Poets, and if you answered unsatisfactorily, he’ d turn the boat around without a word. It seemed that every young poet I knew wanted to be on that island, each of us writing and sending poems to journals. Even though you might be in the boat and on your way, he was the gatekeeper to the island of poets. Poets such as Rita Dove, accessible through their poetry, were seemingly inaccessible in real life, like rock stars in a stratosphere unfamiliar to me-as if they lived together on a mysterious island for poets and the only transport to the island was by a small boat with an underpowered smoking motor, chugging and puffing, and the man steering the boat was an old poet who spoke every language. In 1985, I was as green as it gets, just a student-poet trying to find a voice and something significant to write about in a poetry world of such vast expanse that I had no idea of its breadth. Rita Dove at home in Charlottesville, Virginia. I can scarcely remember a time when I opened this anthology and did not read “Ö,” where one sound changed Rita Dove’s neighborhood, and where one poem changed the way the young man I was read poetry. For many of these poets, it was their first exposure to a national audience, and it was my first exposure to such a gargantuan volume-nearly eight hundred pages. It’s where always I traveled for a quick poetry fix, opening the book randomly and then returning to those I enjoyed the most. Hummer, William Matthews, Pattiann Rogers, Sharon Olds, Michael Ryan, Elizabeth Spires, Edward Hirsch, and many others-but most especially Rita Dove. The Morrow was where I found the largest group of kindred spirits, those contemporary poets who spoke to me unlike any others: Stephen Dobyns, Robert Hass, T. As much as I loved other anthologies, from the Morrow I devoured the poets, writing notes upon notes on its pages until they cracked and pulled away from the spine. I first met Rita Dove in person at Emory University in 1992 after she read from her just-published novel Through the Ivory Gate, but in truth I met her long before that when in 1985 I discovered the Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, edited by Dave Smith and David Bottoms. ![]()
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