220 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
For her third book, Thomas and Beulah (1986), Dove depicts in forty-four
poems the lives of her maternal grandparents. The linked poems narrate events
from 1919 when Thomas leaves Tennessee, his marriage to Beulah, and their lives
in Akron, Ohio, until his death in 1963 and Beulah’s in 1969. The work is divided
into two sections, with the first, “Mandolin,” consisting of twenty-three poems
about Thomas; the second, “Canary in Bloom,” has twenty-one poems featur-
ing Beulah’s life. The poems are told by an omniscient narrator in third-person
but include quoted monologue and dialogue to showcase multiple perspectives.
Details, such as changing her grandmother’s name, Georgianna, to Beulah, sug-
gest an attempt to move beyond historical specificity. Indeed, part of Dove’s
purpose in depicting her grandparents’ lives is to limn the realities of the Great
Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the North in search of
opportunities. The chronology included at the end further emphasizes the inter-
sections between personal lives and public history. Here Dove lists the moments
described in the poems against historical events such as World War II and the
assassination of John F. Kennedy.
With her next two collections of original works, Grace Notes (1989) and
Mother Love (1995), Dove reworks scenes from her personal life. With the first,
Dove tried “to counter the heavy weight of Thomas and Beulah, which has such
a big scope” (Vendler). Many of the poems here focus on domestic scenes and
familiar spaces: homes, kitchens, porches, yards; they feature private scenes that
become revelatory of women’s lives. In “After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen
for the Third Time Before Bed,” a simple moment between mother and daughter
delivers an innocent comparison of bodies and a reminder of female vulnerabil-
ity: “this... is what a stranger cannot touch / without her yelling.” Mother Love
(1995) expands upon the mother-daughter relationship through an exploration
and revision of the myth of Persephone and Demeter. In her foreword, “An Intact
World,” Dove explains the reason for her subject matter: “[T]here comes a point
when a mother can no longer protect her child, when the daughter must go her
own way into womanhood.” For Dove, the mother-daughter separation represents
both loss and possibility, which she investigates in spare, controlled rhythms.
Most of the poems are sonnets in various forms.
In subsequent collections, On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American
Smooth (2004), and Sonata Mulattica (2008), Dove continues to use her craft
to discover connections between the personal and private with subjects that are
also public and political. Although Dove is most known for her poetry, she has
also written prose works: Fifth Sunday (1992), a short-story collection; Through
the Ivory Gate (1992), a novel; and The Darker Face of the Earth: A Verse Play in
Fourteen Scenes (1994). These works address many of the themes Dove treats in
her poetry—music, growing up female and black, cultural limitations—yet have
not received the same critical attention or acclaim as Dove’s poetry.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- Although coming to consciousness and serious writing during the Black Arts
movement, Dove resists having her work categorized as part of this important