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Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems
In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or Black Lives Matter, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history’s grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives—the simmering resentment of an elevator operator, an octogenarian’s exuberant mambo, the mordant humor of a philosophizing cricket.
Audaciously playful yet grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to apocalyptic failures of the human soul.
Audaciously playful yet grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to apocalyptic failures of the human soul.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 3, 2021
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1982 people want to read
About the author
Rita Dove
95 books256 followersRita 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.
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February 10, 2022
‘Who wouldn’t want to believe / in legends again…’
A new collection from former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove is always a cause for celebration and after 12 years of waiting she more than lives up to the expectations of her long and fabulous career in Playlist for the Apocalypse. The title perfectly captures the tone of this collection with the way she takes a long hard gaze into history and all its sorrows and injustices yet overall the collection still feels playful despite the difficult content. Divided in sections that represent different series of poems, Dove tackles a wide variety of topics from the AIDS crisis and Charlottesville to her own struggles with MS and insomnia. Filled with a wealth of knowledge and insight, Dove playfully looks reality and mortality in the face and creates poems that will keep us surviving even the bleakest of days. Though she captures this feeling best herself:
‘Let it be said
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love is what sustained us.’
Rita Dove is a national treasure. I mean, she has been awarded both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts and is the only poet to do so, but even all the accolades can’t prepare you for the beauty and power in her body of work. ‘What you hear is a lifetime of song,’ she writes in ‘Postlude’, and this collection feel like that playlist of a life well spent loving and learning. Her voice is strong and daring as ever here, and her playful approach to serious subjects manages to not come across as blithe but as a caring mentor guiding us through the world, bestowing harsh knowledge without making us faint from fear. Dove has always had poetry so full of love for the art, for words, for life and for the reader and it is on full display here. ‘this is my raft / I pile my dreams on she writes in ‘Island’ and we are all blessed to be on this journey with her.
‘You stop to gaze at the softening sky
because there is nowhere else to look
without remembering pity and contempt,
without harboring rage.’
Two sections of this book are particularly powerful looks at human history. ‘After Egypt’ is a series of poems written for the 500th anniversary of when ‘the Jews of Venice had to move to a section of the principality known as the Ghetto--the first use of this word for segregated, and subpar, living quarters’ (from her endnotes). Each poem looks at the evolution of the word ‘Ghetto’ and is frequented by allusions to famous people and events such as the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama by the KKK in 1953:
‘You think
as long as we stay where
you've tossed us, on
the slag heap of your regard,
the republic is safe.’
‘A Standing Witness’ is a powerful series of poems that take their titles from lines in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus.These poems cover topics such as AIDS (‘the worst is always / unimaginable’), the Berlin Wall, 9/11 (‘before the world crumbled into a roar / that went on forever, blotting out all animal / comprehension’) and the former US president (‘Oh indolent friend, bitter patriots: / What have you triggered that can’t be undone?’). This section is worth the price of the book alone and chronicles an American tragedy in poetry. ‘And now the story is yours’ she writes, may we continue it well.
‘life’s stubborn mercy—given
to soften or harden us,
as we choose.’
This collection is a wonderful addition to her long line of amazing work. Her most personal section of the book, ‘Little Book of Woe’, details her struggles with MS and living in the public eye and is quite moving. ‘Just wait: before long / you, too, shall rest’ she reminds us. Let’s hope she has time for more poems yet the collections we have are sure to live on in immortality.
5/5
The Sunset Gates
I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like a lamp left burning in the corner.
My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.
I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.
Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.
Come visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.
Who among you is ready to listen?’
A new collection from former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove is always a cause for celebration and after 12 years of waiting she more than lives up to the expectations of her long and fabulous career in Playlist for the Apocalypse. The title perfectly captures the tone of this collection with the way she takes a long hard gaze into history and all its sorrows and injustices yet overall the collection still feels playful despite the difficult content. Divided in sections that represent different series of poems, Dove tackles a wide variety of topics from the AIDS crisis and Charlottesville to her own struggles with MS and insomnia. Filled with a wealth of knowledge and insight, Dove playfully looks reality and mortality in the face and creates poems that will keep us surviving even the bleakest of days. Though she captures this feeling best herself:
‘Let it be said
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love is what sustained us.’
Rita Dove is a national treasure. I mean, she has been awarded both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts and is the only poet to do so, but even all the accolades can’t prepare you for the beauty and power in her body of work. ‘What you hear is a lifetime of song,’ she writes in ‘Postlude’, and this collection feel like that playlist of a life well spent loving and learning. Her voice is strong and daring as ever here, and her playful approach to serious subjects manages to not come across as blithe but as a caring mentor guiding us through the world, bestowing harsh knowledge without making us faint from fear. Dove has always had poetry so full of love for the art, for words, for life and for the reader and it is on full display here. ‘this is my raft / I pile my dreams on she writes in ‘Island’ and we are all blessed to be on this journey with her.
‘You stop to gaze at the softening sky
because there is nowhere else to look
without remembering pity and contempt,
without harboring rage.’
Two sections of this book are particularly powerful looks at human history. ‘After Egypt’ is a series of poems written for the 500th anniversary of when ‘the Jews of Venice had to move to a section of the principality known as the Ghetto--the first use of this word for segregated, and subpar, living quarters’ (from her endnotes). Each poem looks at the evolution of the word ‘Ghetto’ and is frequented by allusions to famous people and events such as the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama by the KKK in 1953:
‘You think
as long as we stay where
you've tossed us, on
the slag heap of your regard,
the republic is safe.’
‘A Standing Witness’ is a powerful series of poems that take their titles from lines in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus.These poems cover topics such as AIDS (‘the worst is always / unimaginable’), the Berlin Wall, 9/11 (‘before the world crumbled into a roar / that went on forever, blotting out all animal / comprehension’) and the former US president (‘Oh indolent friend, bitter patriots: / What have you triggered that can’t be undone?’). This section is worth the price of the book alone and chronicles an American tragedy in poetry. ‘And now the story is yours’ she writes, may we continue it well.
‘life’s stubborn mercy—given
to soften or harden us,
as we choose.’
This collection is a wonderful addition to her long line of amazing work. Her most personal section of the book, ‘Little Book of Woe’, details her struggles with MS and living in the public eye and is quite moving. ‘Just wait: before long / you, too, shall rest’ she reminds us. Let’s hope she has time for more poems yet the collections we have are sure to live on in immortality.
5/5
The Sunset Gates
I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like a lamp left burning in the corner.
My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.
I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.
Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.
Come visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.
Who among you is ready to listen?’
August 16, 2023
Poems that resonate the singularity of shared experiences; Rita Dove is a linguistic surgeon who is able to skillfully dissect the individual need to belong from the body of collective existence. The transitory nature of existence is examined in such a way that the reader feels both the angst and wanting in existence - highest recommendation.
October 29, 2021
each word caught right is a pawned memory, humbly reclaimed.
My ear finds some voices effortlessly. It struggles with many. I mean this both literally and in terms of literature. I tend to mention that I mumble. And forget things -- did I note that previously? I find myself rather receptive to the verse of Ms. Dove. I lack a ready explanation. I did find some poems flat.
I was often moved.
Verse before dawn.
A sleepy town before ablutions, before the shame and deceit. Ms. Dove worked wonders under these conditions.
I appreciate how the poet surveys the personal and locates the historical tendrils.
She calls out and the softened echo condemns.
My ear finds some voices effortlessly. It struggles with many. I mean this both literally and in terms of literature. I tend to mention that I mumble. And forget things -- did I note that previously? I find myself rather receptive to the verse of Ms. Dove. I lack a ready explanation. I did find some poems flat.
I was often moved.
Verse before dawn.
A sleepy town before ablutions, before the shame and deceit. Ms. Dove worked wonders under these conditions.
I appreciate how the poet surveys the personal and locates the historical tendrils.
She calls out and the softened echo condemns.
August 20, 2021
I love the diversity of poems in "Playlist For The Apocalypse". My favorite poem is "Ode To My Left Knee". This poem resonates with me because my left knee is not as strong as it used to be. I love the poem "Aubade East". I learned that an aubade is a poem that that is about the dawn of a new day or early in the morning. "Aubade East" is a poem about enjoying a jog through Harlem in the morning "Green Koan" is a poem about how the human mind can be reliable or faulty. I looked up the definition of a koan and learned it is a kind of paradoxical riddle. I love learning these two literary terms aubade and koan. I will try to apply these concepts in my own attempts in writing poetry.
There is a section of the book called "A Standing Witness". These are poems about different periods in history. The poem "Imprisoned Lightning" is about how the attacks on September 11th changed the world in an instant. Rita Dove also includes poems about her reaction to Presidents Obama and Trump. Both poems are insightful to read. The poetry of Rita Dove is eye opening for me.
There is a section of the book called "A Standing Witness". These are poems about different periods in history. The poem "Imprisoned Lightning" is about how the attacks on September 11th changed the world in an instant. Rita Dove also includes poems about her reaction to Presidents Obama and Trump. Both poems are insightful to read. The poetry of Rita Dove is eye opening for me.
October 25, 2021
Fierce authenticity has a voice.
This collection is a little uneven, but when it soars, it soars.
This collection is a little uneven, but when it soars, it soars.
November 16, 2021
Poetry isn’t really for me, but every so often I venture for some, trying to refine my reading diet to be as inclusive and varied as possible. Since I don’t know much about modern poetry or poets, the books are usually chosen by random factors. With this one, it was the title. And wouldn’t you know it, this ended up being one of my most impressive selections. I actually enjoyed these poems. Not all of them, but most.
There was a rhythm to them, there was a beauty to them and, best of all, there were about something more than the author herself. There were still plenty of personal experiences woven though, but the overall range was broad and featured plenty of general observations on life (specifically American life, but also going as far back as sixteenth century Venice for inspiration), politics, etc.
We live in a very self-focused times where people can’t seem to shut up about themselves and are given multiple platforms to do so, and I find a lot of it in poetry too (I won’t even get started on memoirs), so it’s nice to find a collection where the poet shows the ability to contextualize their individual experience within the greater fabric of the world around them.
This is probably a huge PC gaffe, but every collection of poetry by a black author I’ve read has featured almost exclusively observations on race and every collection of poetry by a gay person featured exclusive observations on sexuality and so it’s nice and refreshing to read an author who can go outside of herself (her race, her gender, her sexuality) and write about the world at large. Of course, I understand that an individual’s race/sexuality/gender/etc. are important and do inform their views, but it shouldn’t be the end all be all sort of thing and the only subject of their conversations.
Anyway, let’s put the soapbox away. This was good, surprisingly good. I wouldn’t be opposed to reading more someday. Recommended.
There was a rhythm to them, there was a beauty to them and, best of all, there were about something more than the author herself. There were still plenty of personal experiences woven though, but the overall range was broad and featured plenty of general observations on life (specifically American life, but also going as far back as sixteenth century Venice for inspiration), politics, etc.
We live in a very self-focused times where people can’t seem to shut up about themselves and are given multiple platforms to do so, and I find a lot of it in poetry too (I won’t even get started on memoirs), so it’s nice to find a collection where the poet shows the ability to contextualize their individual experience within the greater fabric of the world around them.
This is probably a huge PC gaffe, but every collection of poetry by a black author I’ve read has featured almost exclusively observations on race and every collection of poetry by a gay person featured exclusive observations on sexuality and so it’s nice and refreshing to read an author who can go outside of herself (her race, her gender, her sexuality) and write about the world at large. Of course, I understand that an individual’s race/sexuality/gender/etc. are important and do inform their views, but it shouldn’t be the end all be all sort of thing and the only subject of their conversations.
Anyway, let’s put the soapbox away. This was good, surprisingly good. I wouldn’t be opposed to reading more someday. Recommended.
February 10, 2022
Shakespeare Doesn't Care
Shakespeare's taking no prisoners
he's purloined the latest gossip
to plump up his latest comedy,
pens a sonnet while building
a playlist for the apocalypse....p84
A kindness runs through this collection of otherwise somewhat bleak, occasionally triumphant poetry of Rita Dove. Fierce determination shines through tough circumstances as random joy and utter appreciation for life in it's unpredictable gifts.
Tell yourself it's only a sliver of sun
burning into your chest.
from the poem Ghettoland: Exeunt p46
That the mind can go
wherever it wishes
is a kindness
we've come to rely on--
from the poem Green Koan p100
No one is stopping you
What are you waiting for?
from the poem Aubode West p44
Shakespeare's taking no prisoners
he's purloined the latest gossip
to plump up his latest comedy,
pens a sonnet while building
a playlist for the apocalypse....p84
A kindness runs through this collection of otherwise somewhat bleak, occasionally triumphant poetry of Rita Dove. Fierce determination shines through tough circumstances as random joy and utter appreciation for life in it's unpredictable gifts.
Tell yourself it's only a sliver of sun
burning into your chest.
from the poem Ghettoland: Exeunt p46
That the mind can go
wherever it wishes
is a kindness
we've come to rely on--
from the poem Green Koan p100
No one is stopping you
What are you waiting for?
from the poem Aubode West p44
March 23, 2023
An uneven but overall very good collection from one of our best living poets. Declaration of Interdependence is one of my favorites, a dueling dialogue between Jewish and African Americans, throwing out insults and stereotypes only to end with the same line, Do not talk about my mother.
Dove’s poems on the deaths of African American children is heartbreaking without a trace of maudlin, and her poems on her own struggle with illness are razor sharp. I didn’t enjoy the poems in the A Standing Witness section, which apparently were set to music, but her ideas and interests are varied and interesting, making a book of this length an overall satisfying read.
And as far as I’m concerned, Rita Dove is definitely the best alumnus from our mutual alma mater Miami University.
Dove’s poems on the deaths of African American children is heartbreaking without a trace of maudlin, and her poems on her own struggle with illness are razor sharp. I didn’t enjoy the poems in the A Standing Witness section, which apparently were set to music, but her ideas and interests are varied and interesting, making a book of this length an overall satisfying read.
And as far as I’m concerned, Rita Dove is definitely the best alumnus from our mutual alma mater Miami University.
Read
August 26, 2023Sealey Challenge 2023
Book 26
Book 26
January 2, 2022
Goodreads offers an excellent description of Rita Dove’s collection, but it’s more than a poetry book. The collection functions as a lens for viewing the past and learning a history often sugar coated. “Bell ringer,” for example, critiques the historical framing of MLK while offering a scathing analysis of the ways classroom environments erase people of color. “I listen i. in lectures whenever I can, / holding still until I disappear beyond third person—“ These are poems both deeply personal and visionary, moving from intimate experiences to global observations. I’ll be returning to Dove’s poems often to make sense of our complex world.
September 26, 2021
Just not my cup of tea but upped from 2.5* because I did enjoy some of the poems.
September 16, 2025
any Rita dove book has the power to inspire me completely. I spotted one of my favorite poems by her in this book alongside new others that have now made it into my lexicon and intellectual space. what a poet, truly. and a poet that injects meaning into every sentence
January 16, 2022
What do you do when you pick up a poetry collection and the first piece absolutely floors you but the rest hovers somewhere between okay and nice and fair? I mean nothing in here is truly bad, was completely over my head or just absolutely not my taste in poetry. It's what I would call solid and depending from where you stand that is not exactly praise but it is also not the opposite. Solid is a good thing. That first poem though, "Bellringer" I loved that, what it said and how it said it. And I wanted to find more to love and not just to appreciate after that.
I think something about Dove's style is not quite clicking with me which is weird because she actually uses various forms, structures, experiments in here. They don't all sound the same but I think something about it is too polished. She talks about her students and the challenges and prompts she gives them for writing and how they then challenge her in return to try herself at some of those prompts, and I think this slightly overworked sound (aka polished) from being someone who teaches came through occasionally. I think I sometimes prefer more emotions and less of a perfect structure to my poems, or maybe her style just didn't click for me. What do I know. I definitely thought these were interesting, I liked how many of these were like snapshots of all kind's of people's lives not just her own feelings on paper. But then again it failed to resonate on a deeper level me.
I would definitely recommend reading the notes while working through this, there is some useful information about many of the poems. I also would like to highlight the chapter "A Standing Witness". There wasn't a singular poem that stood in a particular way but I quite liked what this section did as a whole, an interesting little stroll through American history.
Some other poems that left a bigger impression on me: Mirror/ Declaration of Interdependence/ Ghettoland: Exeunt/ The Spring Cricket Repudiates His Parable of Negritude/ Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville/ Voiceover/ Last Words. And of course: Bellringer
I think something about Dove's style is not quite clicking with me which is weird because she actually uses various forms, structures, experiments in here. They don't all sound the same but I think something about it is too polished. She talks about her students and the challenges and prompts she gives them for writing and how they then challenge her in return to try herself at some of those prompts, and I think this slightly overworked sound (aka polished) from being someone who teaches came through occasionally. I think I sometimes prefer more emotions and less of a perfect structure to my poems, or maybe her style just didn't click for me. What do I know. I definitely thought these were interesting, I liked how many of these were like snapshots of all kind's of people's lives not just her own feelings on paper. But then again it failed to resonate on a deeper level me.
I would definitely recommend reading the notes while working through this, there is some useful information about many of the poems. I also would like to highlight the chapter "A Standing Witness". There wasn't a singular poem that stood in a particular way but I quite liked what this section did as a whole, an interesting little stroll through American history.
Some other poems that left a bigger impression on me: Mirror/ Declaration of Interdependence/ Ghettoland: Exeunt/ The Spring Cricket Repudiates His Parable of Negritude/ Pedestrian Crossing, Charlottesville/ Voiceover/ Last Words. And of course: Bellringer
February 26, 2022
Rita Dove is an artist who paints a rich canvas with words. She crafts the English language into thoughts and ideas in a deep and meaningful way. The messages she sends in her poems are strong, but it's the rhythm and her unique description of ideas that intrigued me the most.
You will be missing out if you don't read at least of few of the poems from this collection!
You will be missing out if you don't read at least of few of the poems from this collection!
June 2, 2022
How do you choose your poetry? For me, it depends. When I was younger, all my poetry came from anthologies. Units in high school or full text books in college. (No, I'm not an English major. I just took a few courses.) My dad had that leather bound, 1929 edition of 101 Famous Poems. That might have been the first book of poetry I read cover-to-cover, and whenever there was a high school open house, or some such, that was my go-to gift.
Eventually, though I found myself thinking I should give full books a chance. That sure, listening to the title track of Sgt. Pepper's is great... and maybe throw in "A Little Help From My Friends," but come on: you can't take everything one song at a time.
So, I choose by name recognition. If it's a poet I've liked in the past. If I know a poem or two. I judge by covers. I judge by titles. I go to the new poetry section and see what grips me. I'll flip to a random page and give it a whirl, like being in Virgin Records in New York City, at the headphone kiosk, where you could scan a barcode, and listen to as much as you want. Eventually you find a handful of books to take home.
I'd seen Rita Dove's name every now and again. I'd read her collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks back in my pre-review days. I liked it, but didn't love it. This was also in my early "poetry in full books" stage, so who's to say? And it's always been true and pointed out that different poems (songs, lines, prayers) trip your ear depending on your current situation.
Here, the title caught me. Playlist for the Apocalypse. Is there a day that goes by that doesn't seem more ominous than the last? Here's a prediction: this summer will be hot. And the next summer will be hotter. And the first world prayers that the air conditioner doesn't go out will be on millions of privileged lips. (We find the line on page 84, "Shakespeare's taking no prisoners: / he's purloined the latest gossip / to plump up his next comedy, / pens a sonnet while building / a playlist for the apocalypse...") (Fun aside: Station Eleven opens with King Lear.)
I thought the book was good, but I'm' not sure what I'll remember aside from that title.
Maybe this:
I have nothing left to tell you
(muffled voices fad away)
True I will not live forever
(but I shall not die today)
- from Sarra's Blues
Or this:
As usual, you're not listening: Time stops
only if you stop long enough to hear it
- from Postlude
Or maybe this quote from James Baldwin: "People are trapped in history and history trapped in them."
Eventually, though I found myself thinking I should give full books a chance. That sure, listening to the title track of Sgt. Pepper's is great... and maybe throw in "A Little Help From My Friends," but come on: you can't take everything one song at a time.
So, I choose by name recognition. If it's a poet I've liked in the past. If I know a poem or two. I judge by covers. I judge by titles. I go to the new poetry section and see what grips me. I'll flip to a random page and give it a whirl, like being in Virgin Records in New York City, at the headphone kiosk, where you could scan a barcode, and listen to as much as you want. Eventually you find a handful of books to take home.
I'd seen Rita Dove's name every now and again. I'd read her collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks back in my pre-review days. I liked it, but didn't love it. This was also in my early "poetry in full books" stage, so who's to say? And it's always been true and pointed out that different poems (songs, lines, prayers) trip your ear depending on your current situation.
Here, the title caught me. Playlist for the Apocalypse. Is there a day that goes by that doesn't seem more ominous than the last? Here's a prediction: this summer will be hot. And the next summer will be hotter. And the first world prayers that the air conditioner doesn't go out will be on millions of privileged lips. (We find the line on page 84, "Shakespeare's taking no prisoners: / he's purloined the latest gossip / to plump up his next comedy, / pens a sonnet while building / a playlist for the apocalypse...") (Fun aside: Station Eleven opens with King Lear.)
I thought the book was good, but I'm' not sure what I'll remember aside from that title.
Maybe this:
I have nothing left to tell you
(muffled voices fad away)
True I will not live forever
(but I shall not die today)
- from Sarra's Blues
Or this:
As usual, you're not listening: Time stops
only if you stop long enough to hear it
- from Postlude
Or maybe this quote from James Baldwin: "People are trapped in history and history trapped in them."
Read
December 21, 2021"There are spaces for living
and spaces for forgetting.
Sometimes they're the same."
--Voiceover
Other favorites:
-Scarf
-Sarra's Answer
-Your Tired, Your Poor . . . ("Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken // the bodies of its makers?")
-Shakespeare Doesn't Care ("pens a sonnet while building / a playlist for the apocalypse")
-Soup
And a section of "Blues, Straight":
"The cup of plenty runneth
over, ruins my hands--
I've scrubbed them, but
they won't come clean.
Strange, I know, to wish
for nothing. A day
to live through. A scream."
and spaces for forgetting.
Sometimes they're the same."
--Voiceover
Other favorites:
-Scarf
-Sarra's Answer
-Your Tired, Your Poor . . . ("Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken // the bodies of its makers?")
-Shakespeare Doesn't Care ("pens a sonnet while building / a playlist for the apocalypse")
-Soup
And a section of "Blues, Straight":
"The cup of plenty runneth
over, ruins my hands--
I've scrubbed them, but
they won't come clean.
Strange, I know, to wish
for nothing. A day
to live through. A scream."
April 9, 2024
I wasn't particularly blown away by any of these poems, but I did enjoy most of them, and they're rewarding upon multiple reads (although this is not something I granted each and every poem).
Favorite Poems (in no particular order):
Soup
Shakespeare Doesn't Care
Postlude
The Spring Cricket Observes Valentine's Day
Trans-
Euridice, Turning
Girls on the Town, 1946
Lucille, Post-Operative Years
Favorite Poems (in no particular order):
Soup
Shakespeare Doesn't Care
Postlude
The Spring Cricket Observes Valentine's Day
Trans-
Euridice, Turning
Girls on the Town, 1946
Lucille, Post-Operative Years
January 7, 2022
Superb allusions to politics, history, and contemporary issues-- yet just not a style I particularly enjoy overall. The notes at the end help clarify some overarching themes and specific poems. Would eventually like to reread in light of such contexts.
Gems:
1. Your Tired, Your Poor...
2. Voiceover
3. Postlude
4. Trayvon, Redux
5. Sketch for Terezín
Gems:
1. Your Tired, Your Poor...
2. Voiceover
3. Postlude
4. Trayvon, Redux
5. Sketch for Terezín
Read
March 19, 2022I found the scope of this collection vast and expansive, which helped me consider that I guess I like to read poetry that is more focused around a theme. This isn't a critique of the collection - I just don't think I could keep up to appreciate it. Some of the individual poems blasted me away, and I enjoyed reading some of it while walking, to better appreciate the pacing.
Read
January 6, 2022“if all I am
(Am I all?)
Is Woe is
me?”
-Mirror
(Am I all?)
Is Woe is
me?”
-Mirror
March 27, 2022
Took me about half way through before I found connection to the work(s). Once we hit the Decade Testimonies, I was into it.
With poetry, I often feel like I'm missing something crucial that would let me understand what is being imparted (or elided) by the poem. Is that something experiential or cultural and something I don't share with the author? Or is it a failure to understand the literary styling of the piece on my part? Or is the poet just not good?
With poetry, I often feel like I'm missing something crucial that would let me understand what is being imparted (or elided) by the poem. Is that something experiential or cultural and something I don't share with the author? Or is it a failure to understand the literary styling of the piece on my part? Or is the poet just not good?
March 4, 2024
Rita Dove really does it to ya.
February 7, 2022
A nice small book of poetry. Especially enjoyed under the soaking sun…..
November 30, 2023
Some really great ones! Lots that won't stick with me.
September 20, 2024
i like the statue of liberty poems.
March 4, 2023
They’re giving Pulitzers to just anyone these days
April 17, 2022
“If I am to become a heavenly body
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming
itself before a child’s upturned wonder…”
A welcomed and welcoming return for this poet, and she has lived through the times we have just lived through, with the added fear and burden of MS, and it seeps into the poems, but refuses to only be about pain, and only about history, but also about the future, and what we can be, threaded through with music and nature. Some of her references may not stand the test of time like Barnum circus rings, tailfeathers, gambler’s den, an obscure Dickens novel, and feel more European that I would like, but maybe they will set someone’s poetic heart afire 100 years from now, to find out, what size were those circus rings, and what is/was a circus?
ISLAND
A room in one’s head
is for thinking
outside of the box,
though the box is still
there—cosmic cage,
Barnum’s biggest, proudest Ring.
My land: a chair, four sticks
with a board laid across:
This is the raft
I pile my dreams on,
set out to sea.
Look for me, shore.
AUBADE: THE CONSTITUTIONAL
A day like this I should count
among the miracles of living—breath,
a heart that beats, that aches and sings;
even the ecstasy of thirst
or sweat peppering my brow,
fanned by the mercurial breezes
crisscrossing this reserve,
our allotment on earth—
why, then, am I unhappy
when all around me
the human pageant whirrs?
This much I can do for my lost,
my sweet and damaged tribe:
Each morning I pace the tattered verge
of their Most Serene Republic,
patrol each canal’s fogged sibilance,
chanting a day unlike all others—
and then I count it, and the next,
God willing, and each day thereafter
as a path free of echoes,
a promise with no perimeters,
my foot soles polishing the scarred stones.
SKETCH FOR TEREZÍN
Breathe in breathe out
That’s the way
In out
Left right
...if I am to become a heavenly body
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming itself
before a child’s upturned wonder
TRANSIT
If music be the food of love, play on.
This is the house that music built:
each note a fingertip’s purchase,
rung upon rung laddering
across the unspeakable world…
We supped instead each night
on Chopin, hummed our grief-
soaked lullabies to the rapture
rippling through. Let it be said
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love, is what sustained us.
STANDING WITNESS series: (The world premiere had been planned for the 2020 Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, to be followed by a number of performances at other venues, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham; due to the Coronavirus pandemic all those presentations had to be postponed. The titles for the testimonies have been plucked from Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. —James Baldwin
BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR Prologue
Surely there must be something beautiful to smile upon—
the umbered blue edge of sky as it fades into evening,
the brusque green heave of the sea. When I
look up, surely there will be a cloud or a lone star
dangling. Truth is, the Truth has gone walking—
left her perch for the doves and ravens
to ravage, hightailed it to the hills, to the quiet
beyond rivers and trees. No matter
what ragged carnival may be thronging the streets,
what bleak homestead or plantation of sorrows
howling its dominion, Truth would say these are
arrogant times. Believers slaughter their doubters
while the greedy oil their lips with excuses
and the righteous turn merciless; the merciful, mad.
THE SUNSET GATES Epilogue
I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like a lamp left burning in the corner.
My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.
I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.
Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.
Come visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.
Who among you is ready to listen?
VOICEOVER
Impossible to keep a landscape in your head.
Try it: All you’ll get is pieces—the sun
emerging from behind the mountain ridge,
smoke coming off the ice on a thawing lake.
It’s as if our heads can’t contain
anything that vast: It just leaks out.
You can be inside a house and still feel
the rooms you’re not in—kitchen below
and attic above, bedroom down the hall—
but you can’t hold onto the sensation
of being both inside the walls
and outside looking at them
at the same time.
…
Someone once said: There are no answers,
just interesting questions.
(Which way down? asked the dove,
dropping the olive branch.)
If you think about it,
everything’s inside something else;
everything’s an envelope
inside a package in a case—
and pain knows a way into every crevice.
MERCY
An absolute sound,
this soughing above
the tops of trees.
For the longest while
I couldn’t look up, so much
did I long to see ocean,
rough and whitened.
Such soft ululations,
such a drumroll of feathers!
Yet it was no other weather
than Wind. I looked up; the sky
lay blue as always, Biblical
and terrifying, just where
it was supposed to be.
WAYFARER’S NIGHT SONG
Above the mountaintops
all is still.
Among the treetops
you can feel
barely a breath—
birds in the forest, stripped of song.
Just wait: before long
you, too, shall rest.
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming
itself before a child’s upturned wonder…”
A welcomed and welcoming return for this poet, and she has lived through the times we have just lived through, with the added fear and burden of MS, and it seeps into the poems, but refuses to only be about pain, and only about history, but also about the future, and what we can be, threaded through with music and nature. Some of her references may not stand the test of time like Barnum circus rings, tailfeathers, gambler’s den, an obscure Dickens novel, and feel more European that I would like, but maybe they will set someone’s poetic heart afire 100 years from now, to find out, what size were those circus rings, and what is/was a circus?
ISLAND
A room in one’s head
is for thinking
outside of the box,
though the box is still
there—cosmic cage,
Barnum’s biggest, proudest Ring.
My land: a chair, four sticks
with a board laid across:
This is the raft
I pile my dreams on,
set out to sea.
Look for me, shore.
AUBADE: THE CONSTITUTIONAL
A day like this I should count
among the miracles of living—breath,
a heart that beats, that aches and sings;
even the ecstasy of thirst
or sweat peppering my brow,
fanned by the mercurial breezes
crisscrossing this reserve,
our allotment on earth—
why, then, am I unhappy
when all around me
the human pageant whirrs?
This much I can do for my lost,
my sweet and damaged tribe:
Each morning I pace the tattered verge
of their Most Serene Republic,
patrol each canal’s fogged sibilance,
chanting a day unlike all others—
and then I count it, and the next,
God willing, and each day thereafter
as a path free of echoes,
a promise with no perimeters,
my foot soles polishing the scarred stones.
SKETCH FOR TEREZÍN
Breathe in breathe out
That’s the way
In out
Left right
...if I am to become a heavenly body
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming itself
before a child’s upturned wonder
TRANSIT
If music be the food of love, play on.
This is the house that music built:
each note a fingertip’s purchase,
rung upon rung laddering
across the unspeakable world…
We supped instead each night
on Chopin, hummed our grief-
soaked lullabies to the rapture
rippling through. Let it be said
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love, is what sustained us.
STANDING WITNESS series: (The world premiere had been planned for the 2020 Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, to be followed by a number of performances at other venues, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham; due to the Coronavirus pandemic all those presentations had to be postponed. The titles for the testimonies have been plucked from Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. —James Baldwin
BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR Prologue
Surely there must be something beautiful to smile upon—
the umbered blue edge of sky as it fades into evening,
the brusque green heave of the sea. When I
look up, surely there will be a cloud or a lone star
dangling. Truth is, the Truth has gone walking—
left her perch for the doves and ravens
to ravage, hightailed it to the hills, to the quiet
beyond rivers and trees. No matter
what ragged carnival may be thronging the streets,
what bleak homestead or plantation of sorrows
howling its dominion, Truth would say these are
arrogant times. Believers slaughter their doubters
while the greedy oil their lips with excuses
and the righteous turn merciless; the merciful, mad.
THE SUNSET GATES Epilogue
I didn’t ask to stand under a crown of spikes
with my book and my torch, forgotten
like a lamp left burning in the corner.
My shoulder aches, my toes are throbbing.
I’d rather bathe in a park fountain
or cast benediction from the shadowy nest
of a cathedral’s gilded ribs.
Liberty’s pale green maiden, stranded.
Come visit! Ascend to the crown and gaze out
at the nation I’ve sworn to watch over.
I stand ready to tell you what I have seen.
Who among you is ready to listen?
VOICEOVER
Impossible to keep a landscape in your head.
Try it: All you’ll get is pieces—the sun
emerging from behind the mountain ridge,
smoke coming off the ice on a thawing lake.
It’s as if our heads can’t contain
anything that vast: It just leaks out.
You can be inside a house and still feel
the rooms you’re not in—kitchen below
and attic above, bedroom down the hall—
but you can’t hold onto the sensation
of being both inside the walls
and outside looking at them
at the same time.
…
Someone once said: There are no answers,
just interesting questions.
(Which way down? asked the dove,
dropping the olive branch.)
If you think about it,
everything’s inside something else;
everything’s an envelope
inside a package in a case—
and pain knows a way into every crevice.
MERCY
An absolute sound,
this soughing above
the tops of trees.
For the longest while
I couldn’t look up, so much
did I long to see ocean,
rough and whitened.
Such soft ululations,
such a drumroll of feathers!
Yet it was no other weather
than Wind. I looked up; the sky
lay blue as always, Biblical
and terrifying, just where
it was supposed to be.
WAYFARER’S NIGHT SONG
Above the mountaintops
all is still.
Among the treetops
you can feel
barely a breath—
birds in the forest, stripped of song.
Just wait: before long
you, too, shall rest.
January 31, 2022
Her first book of new poems in 12 years, one definitely feels the heft in these poems of that time passing. Each poem reminds of an event, and the feelings and thoughts that have brewed along with them.
And not necessarily closure.
“That the mind can go
wherever it wishes
is a kindness
we’ve come to reply on;
that it returns
unbidden to the soul
it could not banish
and learns to thrive there
is life’s stubborn mercy—given
to soften or harden us,
as we choose”
from “Green Koan”
And not necessarily closure.
“That the mind can go
wherever it wishes
is a kindness
we’ve come to reply on;
that it returns
unbidden to the soul
it could not banish
and learns to thrive there
is life’s stubborn mercy—given
to soften or harden us,
as we choose”
from “Green Koan”
September 16, 2021
I don’t read much poetry because I’m often unable to find a way of understanding it. This collection was thankfully, mostly, within my reach. I love the way this poet surprises me with sudden twists and turns and humor that sears the heart. There has been no other poet that made me exclaim the same way as those exquisite moments in jazz where the threads come together just so.
January 2, 2022
The beauty of words that hold you in the memory with them . Long awaited words that we grasp tightly so they do not fly away .
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