On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems.

by Rita Dove

If you find memoirs more immediate than contemporary poetry, novels more compelling, history more vivid, then you haven't read Rita Dove. A former poet laureate of the United States, Dove is at the height of her powers in On the Bus with Rosa Parks. Her range is extraordinary. The opening "Cameos" sequence reads like a compressed colloquial epic of one hard-up but lively family--Lucille with her "bright and bitter" eyes, her wandering husband, Joe, their bookish son and seven daughters ("their / names fantastic, myriad / as the points of a chandelier"). There are magnificent occasional pieces--"Incarnation in Phoenix" on breastfeeding a newborn ("I'm not ready for this motherhood stuff"); "Against Self-Pity" ("pure misery a luxury /one never learns to enjoy"); "The First Book" ("Dig / You'll never reach bottom"). "Rosa," the centerpiece of the title sequence, reads almost like haiku as Dove captures Rosa Parks's historic act of refusal in 12 taut lines. And then there are poems that stand alone for their unique electrifying "The Venus of Willendorf," in which Dove ponders the ancient sacred mystery of man's worship of the female body, and "Lady Freedom Among Us," in which Freedom is incarnated as a bag lady--"she who has brought mercy back into the streets / and will not retire politely to the potter's field."Of the many notes that Dove hits in this volume, the most welcome is pure unadulterated delight, as in "Dawn Revisited": "Imagine you wake up / with a second chance..." Dove has done the hard part. All we have to do is open this splendid volume, sit back, and enjoy the ride. --David Laskin

Genres: Poetry, Race, African American, Fiction, Adult, American, Historical Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Rita Dove, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and musician, lives in Charlottesville, where she is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that I'd declare Richard Blanco as my favorite living poet these days, but Rita Dove's work has been slowly inching its way into my consciousness, and unfolding itself to me in all of its glory, calling out to me to demand, at least, a tied-for-favorite-living-poet status.

These two poets share at least one thing in common:





I like to think of Rita Dove's poetry as being influenced by my tied-for-favorite-dead-female-poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, but after reading Ms. Dove's most recent bio, I don't see any proof of that.

Perhaps the one poet didn't influence the other, or maybe her impact was a subconscious one. (Or, perhaps, I am simply delusional). Personally, I didn't realize how much my own poetry had been influenced, as a child, by my steady diet of Robert Frost. I didn't realize, until my late 20s, that I structured even my stanzas in the same way he did.

But, this is, after all, a reminder of WHY we read the greats, or why we should challenge our minds and our hearts to read works of poetry and prose that hover just above us, outside of our current artistic scope, but within the realm of possibility. We don't read them to stop creating, we read them to deepen the act of our own creation.

We never know who among us will be the next Audre Lorde or June Jordan, but we need to read them, to find out. To uncover such potential in ourselves.

As far as I can determine, Rita Dove's two greatest gifts are in her storytelling and her use of imagery.

Just take a look at this, folks:

. . . he cups another fly. (He likes to
shake them dizzy
in his hands, like dice, then
throw them out for luck.
They blink on helplessly
then stagger from the sidewalk
up and gone.)

Where's my blanket? I'd like to wrap it around me, Linus-like. Wake Carl Sandburg from his grave.

And, how about perspective? Here's a mother's take on the topic of adult children:

(Aggressively adult, they keep their
lives, to which
I am a witness.

At the other end
I orbit, pinpricked
light. I watch.
I float and grieve.)

I grieve, too, Rita.

And, finally, on the topic of middle age:

So I wear cosmetics maliciously
now. And I like my bracelets,
even though they sound ridiculous,
clinking as I skulk through the mall,
store to store like some ancient
iron-clawed griffin—but I've never
stopped wanting to cross
the equator, or touch an elk's
horns, or sing Tosca or screw
James Dean in a field of wheat.
To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong:
I'll never be through with my life.

Amen, sister, and God save the queen!

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poet Rita Dove was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1993 at the age of 40. Much of her work is about the African-American experience, although many of her poems also show her love of music, history, and creativity. A group of poems about a working class family going through difficult times begins her 1990 work, "On the Bus With Rosa Parks". She ends it with poems about the Civil rights era as young black women bravely speak out about racist actions. From the third stanza of "The Enactment" (regarding the racist treatment of Mary Ware on a bus):

Then all she's got to do is
sit there, quiet, till
the next moment finds her-and only then
can she open her mouth to ask
"Why do you push us around?"
and his answer: "I don't know but
the law is the law and you
are under arrest."

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since she's discovered
men would rather drown
than nibble,
she does just
fine.

There are no direct references to social justice in these pages but to suggest it isn't present is to quip that since breathing isn't in itself named, that such a motor function is likewise absent. I myself feel as if I am choking on fibers, torn tissue of what it means to be alive. We are a dastardly species. Certain hopes satisfied a philosophical ideal. This led to institutions which serve to protect us.

Alas, we are jackals.
That hasn't changed.

I truly enjoyed the opening and concluding sections of the book. The middle wanted to flaunt something. There is courting and forgiveness in the opening. Such is presented as a natural cycle. The final poems cast an eye towards a past, not necessarily ours, but a past.

[Dunja · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dođavola s mudrovanjem. Svi oni greše:
Nikad neću odustati od života."

[marko · Rating 5 out of 5]

ROZA

Kako je sela tamo,
u pravo vreme na mesto
toliko pogrešno da je bilo pravo.

To jednostavno ime sa
svojim snovima o klupi
za predah. Njen praktični kaput.

Ne učiniti ništa bilo je sve:
blistavi plamen u njenom pogledu
isprekidan blicem foto-aparata.

Kako je ustala
kad su se sagnuli da joj podignu
torbu. Ta ljubaznost.

[Women's National Book Association of New Orleans · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Women's National Book Association sent this book to the White House yesterday (March 24) in honor of Women's History Month: https://www.wnba-centennial.org/book-...

From the Women's National Book Association's press release:

Rita Dove manages something rare and wonderful in a story told through poems—she humanizes icon Rosa Parks, whose quiet act of courage changed the course of history. We see how an everyday woman with no notion of fame, acted from her convictions. More importantly, we see her as a person through the prism of Dove’s elegiac poetry, starting with the opening cycle, “Cameos,” which serves as the portrait of an extraordinary ordinary life. Rita Dove’s powerful poems have a musicality that drives the narrative forward, a jazz and blues rhythm perfectly suited to the place and time of Rosa Park’s Montgomery, Alabama bus rides. The final sequence is electrifying as it builds towards that pivotal moment in civil rights history when Rosa refused to go to the back of the bus and surrender her seat to a white woman. Rita Dove reminds us of the Poetry of the People through the brilliance of On the Bus with Rosa Parks.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was brilliant. So many of these poems are so relatable, and at the same time they look at the world from an angle I never considered.

Dawn Revisited
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits —
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.


The Camel Comes To Us From The Barbarians
This one is enormous: rough-cut,
the fur like matted felt— and so much of it,

rising in vulgar mounds upon its back
as if the sand itself had belched
into heaven's beard. Gods,

what malevolence! The eye a constant
rolling orb, glistening with ill intent,
yellowed, gummed with hair, more hairs

than you or I would care to count,
that eye marks every move its jailer makes
and waits for him to step too near –

one blow would cripple any man.
Another specimen stands bellowing
beneath the farthest palm. Though slighter,

it daunts equally, staked haunches
straining, muscles potent as the reek
that saturates our sun-baked marketplace.

About the larger one some purpose lurks:
Hindquarters splayed, it tugs against its ropes,
snorts, yearns its massive head and slavers

toward that godawful sound. Could
the drabber one be female, and its mate?
More monsters in our midst!

And yet . . . if these vile creatures be
like geese, or dogs, and their offspring
learn to cuddle the one

who coddles them first – why,
our fortune’s pegged for sure.
Let us display our sternest countenance,

then apportion what they most desire
according to the measure of their service.
A rare commodity, these beasts –

who cannot know
what beauty wreaks, what mountains
pity moves.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dove descends onto the concreteness of the lives of poetry on the bus. Strange and familiar as historical fiction.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the exalted fluorescence of the midnight route,
exhaustion sweetening the stops. There's
no money here, just chips and signatures,
no neat dime or tarnished token, no exact change.
Here I float on the lap of existence. Each night
I put this body into its sleeve of dark water with no more

than a teardrop of ecstasy, a thimbleful of ache.
And that, friends, is the difference--
I can't erase an ache I never had.
Not even my own grandmother would pity me;
instead she'd suck her teeth at the sorry sight
of some Negro actually looking for misery.

Well, I'd go home if I knew where to get off.

from "QE2. Transatlantic Crossing. Third Day.

I misunderstood the title of this collection and, initially, I tried to understand what the opening sections had to do with Rosa Parks. Parks is not examined until the final section--after Rita Dove has taken readers on a tour of her personal history, emotions, and thoughts. It's a fascinating tour, and Dove's verse is ideally suited to her content.

Unlike the sonnets and allusions to classical mythology which make up her collection Mother Love--which I also highly recommend--On the Bus with Rosa Parks is entirely in free verse and semi-autobiographical. Dove maintains a strong poetic voice in each poem, often crafting amazing lines of elegance and strength.

Rita Dove is a great American poet and we should all set aside some time to read why.

Against Self-Pity

It gets you nowhere but deeper into
your own shit--pure misery a luxury
one never learns to enjoy. There's always some

meatier malaise, a misalliance ripe
to burst: Soften the mouth to a smile and
it stutters; laugh, and your drink spills onto the wake

of repartee gone cold. Oh, you know
all the right things to say to yourself: Seize
the day, keep the faith, remember the children

starving in India...the same stuff
you say to your daughter
whenever a poked-out lip betrays

a less than noble constitution. (Not that
you'd consider actually going to India--all
those diseases and fervent eyes.) But if it's

not your collapsing line of credit, it's
the scream you let rip when a centipede
shrieks up the patio wall. And that

daughter? She'll find a reason to laugh
at you, her dear mother: Poor thing
wouldn't harm a soul! she'll say, as if

she knew of such things--
innocence, and a soul smart enough to know
when to get out of the way.

[kathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

YES

[Mal Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her work is very beautiful. It is just as someone described "a film with the volume turned down." this is beautiful and elegant. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to hear what silence is like but to also feel the small feelings that follow many women around.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ok collection of poems with a few standouts. The first set, "Cameos," captures mid-century working life for blacks. Dove is especially vivid here. The closing sequence, the namesake for the book, tells the Rosa Parks story more obliquely, less narrative than moments, or reflections. I had hoped, I suppose, for a little more heat here, but Dove instead keeps the voice cool as is her style.

For a poem for graduation or an important birthday, Testimonial brought a lot of pleasure:

Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes
melted summer into autumn,
when all the poplars quivered
sweetly in rank and file...

the world called, and I answered.
Each glance ignited to a gaze.
I caught my breath and called that life,
swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,
luck leaked out everywhere.
I gave m promise to the world,
and the world followed me here.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot here that I can appreciate on a technical, craft level... but it just isn't necessarily my thing. I want to understand Dove's poetry and it feels at once accessible and inaccessible - like I have to work too hard to find out what's being said, and in the end it feels like too much and not enough.

[A E Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book but did not. I found a few poems, like Singsong, that were beautiful and thought-provoking. However, most of the poems did not affect me in that way. I even reread most of them after finishing the book once. I would still recommend this book. The poems that did stand out were memorable, and maybe others can see in the poems that I did not.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I carried it home, past five blocks of aluminum siding
and the old garage where, on its boarded-up dloors,
someone had scrawled

I can eat an elephant
If I take small bites.

Yes, I said, to no one in particular: That's
what I'm gonna do!

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

(So there you are at last -

a pip, a button in the grass.

The world's begun

without you.




And no reception but

accumulation time.

Your face hidden but your name

shuddering on air!)

- Cameos: Birth, pg. 16

* * *





When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles

and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy

waiting for my owner to pick me up.




When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.

There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.




I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,

tongued in honey and coddled in milk,

sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a cold.




And the world was already old.

And I was older than I am today.

- Singsong, pg. 27

* * *





Open it.




Go ahead, it won't bite.

Well . . . maybe a little.




More a nip, like. A tingle.

It's pleasurable, really.




You see, it keeps on opening.

You may fall in.




Sure, it's hard to get started;

remember learning to use




knife and fork? Dig in:

You'll never reach bottom.




It's not like it's the end of the world -

just the world as you think




you know it.

- The First Book, pg. 31

* * *






I learned the spoons from

my grandfather, who was blind.

Every day he'd go into the woods

'cause that was his thing.

He met all kinds of creatures,

birds and squirrels,

and while he was feeding them

he'd play the spoons,

and after they finished

they'd stay and listen.




When I go into Philly

on a Saturday night,

I don't need nothing but

my spoons and the music.

Laid out on my knees

they look so quiet,

but when I pick them up

I can play to anything:

a dripping faucet,

a tambourine,

fish shining in a creek.




A funny thing:

When my grandfather died,

every creature sang.

And when the men went out

to get him, they kept singing.

They sung for two days,

all the birds, all the animals.

That's when I left the South.

- The Musician Talks about "Process" after Anthony "Spoons" Pough), pg. 42-43

* * *





Palomino, horse on shadows.

Pale of the gyrfalcon

streaking free,

a reckoning -




the dark climbing out a crack in the earth.




Black veils starched for Easter.

The black hood of the condemned,

reeking with slobber.

The no colour behind the eyelid

as the ax drops.




Gauze bandages over the wounds of State.




The canvas is primed, the morning

bitten off but too much to chew.

No angels here:

The last one slipped the room

while your head was turned,




made off for the winter streets.

- Revenant, pg. 56

* * *






Nothing comes to mind.




I place my arm on my knee

and a small ache shimmers

in the elbow. Gristle

perhaps, or the nub of a nerve.

Who knows? Don't think;

lean into the wrought iron

until the table quakes, sends the wine aquiver.




Nothing happens.

Red homunculus settling,

green - Libelle? cicada - drifting by

as a breeze rouses the linden,

lifts a millimeter of leaf

all the way down the boulevard.

This elbow's no good. I'd rather be




anywhere - and if I dare blink

of belch, or scratch at my furrowed unease;

if I refuse to look up, into God's

bland countenance . . .

the lost wing would still itch

and the wine stay bitter

in the glass - a mouthful of sin




in an inchful of hell.

- Against Repose, pg. 62

* * *





Lord, Lord. No rest

for the wicked?

Most likely no

heating pads.




(Heat some gravy for the potatoes,

slice a little green pepper

into the pinto beans . . .)



Sometimes a body

just plain grieves.





Stand by me in this, my hour -

- Sit Back, Relax, pg. 75

* * *





How she sat there,

the time right inside a place

so wrong it was ready.



That trim name with

its dream of a bench

to rest on. Her sensible coat.



Doing nothing was the doing:

the clean flame of her gaze

carved by a camera flash.



How she stood up

when they bent down to retrieve

her purse. That courtesy.

- Rosa, pg. 83

[Francisca · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5*

i didn't even realise while reading that suddenly i had reached the last page.

although i try to stay away from feeling ashamed about my reading habits as much as i like not to judge other people's, i do feel a bit of embarrassment at realising this is my first poetry collection of the year written by a woman. i wouldn't go as far as to say shame on me but perhaps i could softly whisper it to me once.

without carrying with me any form of expectation about this collection, ultimately i was pleasantly surprised by it. there are no grandiose themes here, no overly compex elaborations. instead, this collection presents a quiet exploration into the timeline of a single individual. that is not to say that the author cannot have a collective identity. like whitman's famous phrase "i contain multitudes," rita dove's story is one of many contained within a single person, foregrounded above the rest by the power of her words.

i do recommend reading this collection in one sitting (i did it in two). the chronological flow of her story easily emerges as one reads from one poem to the next--past, present, future (and history) becoming in the end one interconnected sequence of a single polyphonic identity.

[Jasonlylescampbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rita Dove writes blow you away (and sometimes for me any way, makes me feel like i need to be a lot more intelligent to understand) poetry. Here series that ends the book and makes the title on Rosa Parks is a very powerful exploration of that moment and change. Here is from one of the poems:

"The situation is intolerable"

Intolerable [italics]: that civilized word.
Aren't we civilized too? Shoes shined,
each starched cuff unyeilding,
each dovegray pleated trouser leg
a righteous sword advancing
onto the field of battle
in the name of the Lord . . .

Hush, now. Assay
the terrain: all around us dark
and the perimeter in flames,
but the stars--
tiny, missionary stars--
on high, serene, studding
the inky brow of heaven.

So what if we were born up a creek
and knocked flat with the paddle,
if we ain't got a pot to piss in
and nowhere to put it if we did?
Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse
is to sit here and do nothing.
O yes. O mercy on our souls.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, I was surprised that only the last section of the book was actually about Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement. But having read the others, I see how the title is fitting and that we are all ‘on the bus’ moving forward and helping others do the same.

My favorite was the poem about aging entitled Gotterdammerung.

On the other end of the age spectrum I enjoyed For Sophie who’ll be in First Grade on 2000. Here are a few lines:

“May the world, in your hands,
brighten with use. May you
sleep in sweet breath
and rise always in wonder
to mountain and forest,
green gaze and silk cheek” p 71


I thoroughly enjoyed these poems.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

On The Bus With Rosa Parks is the first collection I have read from Rita Dove, and it feels like a wonderful place to start. The poetry varies in style from poem to poem, and blend individual history with a broader, societal history. The poems I most enjoyed were Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967; Gotterdammerung, and Ghost Walk.

I definitely recommend this for anyone looking for a good poetry collection to read.

[Jennifer Stoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't quite get into it as a collection, but there were some standouts. The first collection, Cameos, hung together very well, as did the On the Bus With Rosa Parks section. Maple Valley Library, 1967, probably resonated with me the most, but "ah - and then / no more postponed groceries, / and that blue pair of shoes!" were the lines that spoke to me most (from "My Mother Enters the Work Force") because it cuts out all the fat and gristle from the bone of the poem.

[Wuttipol✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosa

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

[Tauwan Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another strong, wonderfully arranged set of poems from Ms. Dove. I like how she aligned her own personal Black narrative into Rosa’s/the struggle for Civil Rights/Black History in general. The strongest portion of the book is of course the closing section of poems dealing with Rosa and company. Not my favorite release from her, but a great quick read nonetheless.

[Keaton]

ironically enough, I found the titular section the least interesting lol. really liked the surreal almost horror trends in some of these: "Once I Cut My Thumb On Purpose," "Sunday," "Best Western Motor Lodge" etc, "Revenant"

[Sajah Kuderman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a book report due on this poetry collection on Thursday and good GOD am I stunned by this poet. She has completely blown me out of the water. Definitely definitely recommend this and I will be buying more of her work soon.

[Yana · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this meditation on history, all of the poems have this very pleasant cadence to them.

[Jeimy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection shows how former Poet Laureate Rita Dove is a master at her craft. Almost every poem in this collection has examples of sublime writing.

[J.A.]

These poems are silk thread, strung and knotted, sweetly and vibrantly singing.

[Jason]

"Singsong," "The First Book," and "Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967" are perfect poems to read with your children.

[Ivana Maksić · Rating 5 out of 5]

love it! sensuous and poignant! & political in its most effective, profound sense!