The Darker Face of Earth
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1952-
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Poet Rita Frances Dove was born August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio, the
daughter of Ray and Elvira Dove. A National Merit Scholar, she
attended Miami University in Ohio from which she graduated summa cum
laude in 1973. She then attended the Universitaet Tuebingen
in West Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1974-1975. In 1977
she graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop with an
MFA. It was in Iowa that Ms. Dove met her husband, German novelist
Fred Viebahn; they married in 1979 and have one daughter, Aviva
Chantal Tamu Dove-Viebahn.
Having published the chapbook, Ten Poems, in 1977, Dove was
awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio
Arts Council. In 1981 she accepted a position as Assistant
Professor in the English Department at Arizona State University in
Tempe. She left Arizona State in 1989 with the rank of Professor of
English for a position as Professor of English in Charlottesville at
the University of Virginia. In 1993 she was named Commonwealth
Professor of English, a position she continues to hold. That same year the Librarian of Congress named
Dove Poet Laureate of the United States. Dove became the youngest
person and
only African American to be named to that post, an appointment she held
for two years. During her tenure she brought Crow Indian schoolchildren from
Montana to read their poems at the Library of Congress, helped
launch a series of public-service ads about poetry in conjunction with
the Lifetime cable network, and organized other programs in an attempt
to make poetry more "user-friendly."
Included among her numerous awards is a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
in 1987 for Thomas and Beulah; a National Book Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a
Rockefeller Foundation Residency; a Mellon Fellowship; a Heniz Award
in Arts and Humanities; an Amy Lowell Fellowship; and a Shelley
Memorial Award. She has recieved honorary doctorates from eighteen
universities including Boston College, Dartmouth College, the
University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, the University of
North Carolina, Columbia University, and Washington and Lee.
PLAYS
- The Darker Face of Earth - 1994
- Premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, July, 1996. Productions
at Crossroads
Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ, and The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.,
Oct./Nov. 1997, the Royal National
Theatre, London, August 1999, the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, March
2000.
PUBLICATIONS
- Ten Poems (chapbook) - 1997
- The Only Dark Spot in the Sky The Yellow House on the Corner - 1980
- Mandolin (chapbook) - 1982
- Museum - 1983
- Fifth Sunday (short stories) - 1985
- Thomas and Beulah - 1986
- The Other Side of the House - 1988
- Grace Notes - 1989
- Through the Ivory Gate (novel) - 1992
- Selected Poems - 1993
- Lady Freedom Among Us - 1993
- The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play in Fourteen
Scenes - 1994
- Mother Love: Poems - 1995
- Multicultural Voices: Literature from the United States
(non-fiction) - 1995
- The Poets World (essays) - 1995
- On the Bus with Rosa Parks - 1999
AWARDS (selected list)
- Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Thomas and Beulah, 1987
- Ohioana Award for Grace, 1991
- Harvard University Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award, 1993
- Carl Sandburg Award, 1994
- U.S. Poet Laureate, 1994-1995
- Heniz Award in Arts and Humanities, 1996
- Amy Lowell Fellowship, 1997
- Shelley Memorial Award, 1997
CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL RESOURCES
For full citations of the books listed, follow the links to the Resources Page.
Books marked with book covers or a 
are linked to an Amazon.com record.
African-american Almanac
Black
Writers
Contemporary
African American Female Playwrights
Crossing Color
Great Women Writers
Major Twentieth-Century Writers
Notable
Black American Women
Oxford Companion to African American
Literature
Oxford Companion to Women's Writing
in the United States
SELECTED ARTICLES ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Rosenberg, Judith Pierce. "Rita Dove." Belles
Lettres. 9(2):38-41. 1993-1994 Winter.
- Walzer, Kevin. "Rita Dove's Ascent." Elf: Eclectic Literary
Forum. 6(3):43-48. 1996 Fall.
- Pereira, Malin. "An Interview with Rita Dove." Contemporary
Literature. 40(2):183-213. 1999 Summer.
- Steffen, Therese. "The Darker Face of the Earth: A Conversation
with Rita Dove." Transition: an International Review.
7(2 (74)):104-23. 1998.
- Ward, Scott. "No Vers Is Libre." Shenandoah. 45(3):107-19. 1995 Fall.
- Lofgren, Lotta. "Partial Horror: Fragmentation and Healing in Rita
Dove's Mother Love." Callaloo. 19(1):135-42. 1996
Winter.
- Cushman, Stephen. "And the Dove Returned."
Callaloo. 19(1):131-34. 1996 Winter.
- Booth, Alison. "Abduction and Other Severe Pleasures: Rita Dove's
Mother Love." Callaloo. 19(1):125-30. 1996
Winter.
- Edmundson, Mark (ed.). "Rita Dove's Mother Love: A Discussion."
Callaloo. 19(1):123-42. 1996 Winter.
- Berger, Charles. "The Granddaughter's Archive: Rita Dove's Thomas
and Beulah." Western Humanities Review.
50-51(4-1):359-63. 1997 Winter-1997 Spring.
- Hammer, Mike. Daub, Christina. "Rita Dove." Plum Review. 9:27-41
- Hampton, Janet Jones. "Portraits of a Diasporan People: The Poetry
of Shirley Campbell and Rita Dove."
Afro-Hispanic Review. 14(1):33-39. 1995 Spring.
- Cavalieri, Grace. "Rita Dove: An Interview." American Poetry
Review. 24(2):11-15. 1995 Mar-Apr.
- Cook, Emily Walker. "'But She Won't Set Foot / In His Turtle-Dove
Nash': Gender Roles and Gender Symbolism in
Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah." CLA Journal. 38(3):322-30. 1995 Mar.
- Jablon, Madelyn. "The African American Kunstlerroman." Diversity: a
Journal of Multicultural Issues. 2:21-28. 1994.
- endler, Helen. "Rita Dove: Identity Markers."
Callaloo. 17(2):381-98. 1994 Summer.
- Walsh, William. "Isn't Reality Magic? An Interview with Rita Dove."
Kenyon Review. 16(3):142-54. 1994 Summer.
- Wallace, Patricia. "Divided Loyalties: Literal and Literary in the
Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes, Cathy Song and
Rita Dove." Melus. 18(3):3-19. 1993 Fall.
- Vendler, Helen. "A Dissonant Triad." Parnassus-Poetry in
Review. 16(2):391-404. 1991.
- Georgoudaki, Ekaterini. "Rita Dove: Crossing Boudaries."
Callaloo. 14(2):419-33. 1991 Spring.
- Costello, Bonnie. "Scars and Wings: Rita Dove's Grace Notes."
Callaloo. 14(2):434-38. 1991 Spring.
- Taleb-Khyar, Mohamed B. "An Interview with Maryse Conde and Rita
Dove." Callaloo. 14(2):347-66. 1991 Spring.
- Steinman, Lisa M. "Dialogues between History and Dream." Michigan
Quarterly Review. 26(2):428-438. 1987
Spring.
- Schneider, Steven. "Coming Home: An Interview with Rita Dove." Iowa
Review. 19(3):112-123. 1989 Fall.
- Rampersad, Arnold. "The Poems of Rita Dove."
Callaloo. 9(1):52-60. 1986 Winter.
- McDowell, Robert. "The Assembling Vision of Rita Dove."
Callaloo. 9(1):61-70. 1986 Winter.
- Kitchen, Judith. Rubin, Stan Sanvel. Ingersoll, Earl G. (ed.). "A
Conversation with Rita Dove." Black American
Literature Forum. 20(3):227-240. 1986 Fall.
- Waller, Gary. "I and Ideology: Demystifying the Self of
Contemporary Poetry." Denver Quarterly. 18(3):123-138. 1983
Autumn.
LINKS TO INFORMATION
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