2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, a Guggen-
heim Fellowship, the Portia Pittman Fellowship,
a Bellagio Residency, an Ohio Governor’s Award,
the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy
of American Poets, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE Great
American Artist Award, the Harvard University
Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award, the Carl Sandburg
Award, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humani-
ties, the National Humanities medal from the U.S.
government, the 1998 Levinson Prize from Poe t r y,
and myriad other awards, grants, and honors.
Dove’s often-stated belief that poetry should
be accessible to all is evident in the themes and
language of her poetry. Often considered auto-
biographical, her poetry teaches readers to see the
beauty in everyday aesthetics. Beginning with the
publication of her first two chapbooks, Ten Poems
(1977) and The Only Dark Spot in the Sky (1980),
this has been a quality Dove has established
throughout her career. In 1980 she published her
first collection of poetry, The Yellow House on the
Corner, which introduced readers to Dove’s use of
dramatic monologue and narrative. Aside from
her eloquent and accurate depiction of historical
issues such as slavery and freedom, Dove’s work
uses biblical allusions to transcend racial boundar-
ies and establish a universal humanity that allows
for a connection between master and slave.
After producing another chapbook that em-
phasized the musicality of her poetry, Mandolin
(1982). Dove published her second collection of
poetry, Museum. Dove describes the spirit of her
book as the feeling she had while traveling in Eu-
rope: “I was a Black American, and therefore I
became a representative for all of that. And I some-
times felt like a ghost, I mean, people would ask
me questions, but I had a feeling that they weren’t
seeing me, but a shell” (Robin and Ingersoll, 233).
Though both praised and criticized for its univer-
sal quality and avoidance of personal issues, the
precise craft and detailed imagery have fostered a
high regard for Museum.
Dove’s third poetry collection would not face
such mixed reviews. Thomas and Beulah became
the second Pulitzer Prize–winning book by an
African-American poet. This book is divided into
two sections: “Mandolin,” the first section of 23
poems, deals with Thomas, a migrant from Ten-
nessee traveling north in the early 1900s; the sec-
ond 21 poems, titled “Canary,” are about Beulah,
a woman born in 1904 in Georgia. Based on the
lives of Dove’s maternal grandparents, Thomas
and Beulah’s organization shows both sides of
a relationship between a man and woman. The
poems move readers through the experiences of
the two characters—youth, marriage, parenthood,
and death. Through lyric and biography, Dove
again focuses on the small everyday happenings,
giving them meaning that transcends race and
gender, making them universal and meaningful to
all readers.
Dove’s next collection, Grace Notes (1989),
which followed the publication of her chapbook
The Other Side of the House (1988), was also highly
praised. Largely autobiographical, using ordinary
language, the poetry in Grace Notes comments on
middle-class black life. Dove shifted her focus in
her next collection, Mother Love (1995), which
explores mother-daughter relationships through
the Demeter/Persephone myth. Rather than
being sentimental, Dove uses sonnets to focus on
the pain and separation that occurs throughout
the motherhood cycle. Throughout the text, her
poems change speakers so that readers can expe-
rience the emotions and thoughts of the various
personas, as they can in Thomas and Beulah. Ste-
phen Cushman describes Dove’s work as valuing
“both meter and variation, regularity and irregu-
larity, rule and exception” (134), commenting that
these pairings allow readers to register the fluc-
tuations of their own lives.
Dove’s collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks
(1999) uses American mythology and history to il-
luminate characters in their ordinariness. Though
some critics have cited a few weak poems, most
praised Dove’s use of simple yet exact language
and the poems’ lyrical quality. Further, the collec-
tion was nominated for the National Book Critics
Circle Award.
Aside from these collections, Dove’s work has
been translated into Hebrew, French, Norwegian,Dove, Rita Frances 147