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Selected Poems of Rita Dove
Here in one volume is a selection of the extraordinary poems of Rita Dove, who, as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, brought poetry into the lives of millions of people. Along with a new introduction and poem, Selected Poems comprises Dove's collections The Yellow House on the Corner , which includes a group of poems devoted to the themes of slavery and freedom; Museum , intimate ruminations on home and the world; and finally, Thomas and Beulah , winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, a verse cycle loosely based on her grandparents' lives. Precisely yet intensely felt, resonant with the voices of ordinary people, Rita Dove's Selected Poems is marked by lyric intensity and compassionate storytelling.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 1993
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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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
September 19, 2018
Rita Dove joins the ranks of writers who I want to like but don’t. There are some splendid names on this list, so any shame at putting this Poet Laureate on that list is all mine. I ought to like her poetry and I have tried. I have also tried to like some of the poets she has been compared to ~ Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore ~ but my efforts have been in vain.
In cases like these, I aim for appreciation. I believe it’s possible to appreciate art even if I do not and cannot enjoy it. It’s the educator in me I suppose. I know that greatness in art is not the same as art that I like. After all, you too have your likes and dislikes. Imagine if I told you that what I like is great art because I like it, but what you like is only great art if it is also what I like. Am I the measure of greatness? A little humility goes a long way. I try to impart this lesson to my students, especially the ones who believe that Harry Potter is art and Hamlet is dumb.
So Dove is in good company. She shares the same mental space as Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot. One of the benefits of continuing to read these authors’ works even after I have discovered that we have no chemistry is that I am open to finding something I can like about them. One poem perhaps. Or a nice turn of phrase. For these are not books I want to throw against the wall. They are just books that don’t turn me on.
I chose this volume ~ Selected Poems ~ because I wanted to read Thomas and Beulah, but I like to read books cover to cover, so I started at the beginning with The Yellow House on the Corner. I liked the poem in Dove’s introduction to the volume ~ “In the Old Neighborhood” ~ so I was off to a good start, but I quickly became disenchanted. I am no fan of Modernist poetry, so when I do enjoy a Modernist poem it is the exception to the rule.
When I got to the third suite of poems in The Yellow House on the Corner, I was determined that it would be one of those exceptions, but liking and disliking don’t work that way. If it did, I would like brussel sprouts. They look so good on the plate that I keep trying, and failing, to like them. The third suite deals with slavery and covers important events and figures from this period of American history. But recognizing the importance of the poems is like recognizing the nutritional value of brussel sprouts. They may be good, but they’re still not to my taste.
There was one poem in this collection that I did like, so that probably says something about my taste in poetry: “Great Uncle Beefheart.” I liked this endearing poem about a big-hearted but senile uncle just as I liked the nostalgia of “In the Old Neighborhood.”
The second collection of poetry is Museum ~ a promising title for an art lover like me. The first suite has titles like “Tou Wan Speaks to Her Husband, Liu Sheng,” “Catherine of Alexandria,” and “Catherine of Siena.” Predictably, I liked the titles better than the poems themselves. I prefer ekphrastic poetry that is descriptive. So even though there were poems about art and later about poets like Hölderlin and Shakespeare, it was the third of the four suites that I liked the best: the poems about Dove’s father. I especially liked the sensory images in “Grape Sherbet.”
“swirled snow, gelled light”
“It’s just how we imagined lavender
would taste.”
It comes as no surprise that I liked Thomas and Beulah best of the three collections. This collection consists of two suites of poems about Dove’s grandparents. The first suite, “Mandolin,” is about her grandfather and the second suite, “Canary in Bloom,” is about her grandmother. They are designed to be read as a sequence, and I like that. Nevertheless, Modernism is not my thing, so I found myself alternating between poems that I had little interest in unraveling and poems which had immediate emotional resonance.
Two poems which made this collection worth the time and attention I gave it are “Thomas at the Wheel” and “Daystar” ~ coincidentally, one about Thomas and one about Beulah. “Thomas at the Wheel” tells of the death of Thomas. The scene is vivid: the “neon script” and “casino” style lighting of the drugstore is set against the backdrop of a dark empty street. Thomas views the scene through the windshield wipers. A man steps out of the store, lights a cigarette, and tosses the match away in the rain. And Thomas, thinking of Beulah waking up without him, slumps over the car seat ~ his life extinguished like a match tossed away in the rain. Then sirens.
“Daystar” is about an hour of peace and solitude, a moment of pure existence, in the otherwise busy day of Beulah as a wife and mother. In a suite of poems with titles like “Taking in the Wash,” “Dusting,” and “Motherhood,” “Daystar” is where Beulah is just Beulah, not wife of Thomas or mother of Liza, but just Beulah. At night in bed, she would recall that hour “out back with the field mice.” She would . . .
“. . . think of the place that was hers
for an hour—where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.”
Upon closing Selected Poems, I feel that I have achieved my goal of appreciating Dove’s poetry. I still don’t care for Modernism and most of the poems I would not reread, but there were moments when a mood or an image flared up like that match in the rain, generating its little light and its little heat, and that’s enough. More than enough really, for when you’re owed nothing, every little something is a gift.
In cases like these, I aim for appreciation. I believe it’s possible to appreciate art even if I do not and cannot enjoy it. It’s the educator in me I suppose. I know that greatness in art is not the same as art that I like. After all, you too have your likes and dislikes. Imagine if I told you that what I like is great art because I like it, but what you like is only great art if it is also what I like. Am I the measure of greatness? A little humility goes a long way. I try to impart this lesson to my students, especially the ones who believe that Harry Potter is art and Hamlet is dumb.
So Dove is in good company. She shares the same mental space as Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot. One of the benefits of continuing to read these authors’ works even after I have discovered that we have no chemistry is that I am open to finding something I can like about them. One poem perhaps. Or a nice turn of phrase. For these are not books I want to throw against the wall. They are just books that don’t turn me on.
I chose this volume ~ Selected Poems ~ because I wanted to read Thomas and Beulah, but I like to read books cover to cover, so I started at the beginning with The Yellow House on the Corner. I liked the poem in Dove’s introduction to the volume ~ “In the Old Neighborhood” ~ so I was off to a good start, but I quickly became disenchanted. I am no fan of Modernist poetry, so when I do enjoy a Modernist poem it is the exception to the rule.
When I got to the third suite of poems in The Yellow House on the Corner, I was determined that it would be one of those exceptions, but liking and disliking don’t work that way. If it did, I would like brussel sprouts. They look so good on the plate that I keep trying, and failing, to like them. The third suite deals with slavery and covers important events and figures from this period of American history. But recognizing the importance of the poems is like recognizing the nutritional value of brussel sprouts. They may be good, but they’re still not to my taste.
There was one poem in this collection that I did like, so that probably says something about my taste in poetry: “Great Uncle Beefheart.” I liked this endearing poem about a big-hearted but senile uncle just as I liked the nostalgia of “In the Old Neighborhood.”
The second collection of poetry is Museum ~ a promising title for an art lover like me. The first suite has titles like “Tou Wan Speaks to Her Husband, Liu Sheng,” “Catherine of Alexandria,” and “Catherine of Siena.” Predictably, I liked the titles better than the poems themselves. I prefer ekphrastic poetry that is descriptive. So even though there were poems about art and later about poets like Hölderlin and Shakespeare, it was the third of the four suites that I liked the best: the poems about Dove’s father. I especially liked the sensory images in “Grape Sherbet.”
“swirled snow, gelled light”
“It’s just how we imagined lavender
would taste.”
It comes as no surprise that I liked Thomas and Beulah best of the three collections. This collection consists of two suites of poems about Dove’s grandparents. The first suite, “Mandolin,” is about her grandfather and the second suite, “Canary in Bloom,” is about her grandmother. They are designed to be read as a sequence, and I like that. Nevertheless, Modernism is not my thing, so I found myself alternating between poems that I had little interest in unraveling and poems which had immediate emotional resonance.
Two poems which made this collection worth the time and attention I gave it are “Thomas at the Wheel” and “Daystar” ~ coincidentally, one about Thomas and one about Beulah. “Thomas at the Wheel” tells of the death of Thomas. The scene is vivid: the “neon script” and “casino” style lighting of the drugstore is set against the backdrop of a dark empty street. Thomas views the scene through the windshield wipers. A man steps out of the store, lights a cigarette, and tosses the match away in the rain. And Thomas, thinking of Beulah waking up without him, slumps over the car seat ~ his life extinguished like a match tossed away in the rain. Then sirens.
“Daystar” is about an hour of peace and solitude, a moment of pure existence, in the otherwise busy day of Beulah as a wife and mother. In a suite of poems with titles like “Taking in the Wash,” “Dusting,” and “Motherhood,” “Daystar” is where Beulah is just Beulah, not wife of Thomas or mother of Liza, but just Beulah. At night in bed, she would recall that hour “out back with the field mice.” She would . . .
“. . . think of the place that was hers
for an hour—where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.”
Upon closing Selected Poems, I feel that I have achieved my goal of appreciating Dove’s poetry. I still don’t care for Modernism and most of the poems I would not reread, but there were moments when a mood or an image flared up like that match in the rain, generating its little light and its little heat, and that’s enough. More than enough really, for when you’re owed nothing, every little something is a gift.
April 29, 2021
I walked outside;
the grass hissed at my heels.
Up ahead in the lapping darkness
he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,
a brontosaurus, a poet.
I found these selections bold and often luminous. There's a touching and most personal arc to the order in the book, especially the approach to her grandparents Thomas and Beulah . I am not sure I understood that Ms. Dove is from Ohio. I would like to ponder that today, perhaps plumb for links to Toni Morrison.
My time is precarious presently, there's far too much on my plate. I should take a break and consider the hissing grass.
the grass hissed at my heels.
Up ahead in the lapping darkness
he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,
a brontosaurus, a poet.
I found these selections bold and often luminous. There's a touching and most personal arc to the order in the book, especially the approach to her grandparents Thomas and Beulah . I am not sure I understood that Ms. Dove is from Ohio. I would like to ponder that today, perhaps plumb for links to Toni Morrison.
My time is precarious presently, there's far too much on my plate. I should take a break and consider the hissing grass.
July 26, 2016
There are ways
to make of the moment
a topiary
so the pleasure’s in
walking through.
- from "Flirtation"
Surprised and enchanted by these poems, my first thorough introduction to Rita Dove, one of my town’s resident famous poets. I was not expecting the latent mysticism. Her bountiful, far-reaching vocabulary and intellectual curiosity reveal her devotion to lifelong learning, which naturally made me warm to her. I particularly liked her historical poems, the operatic Thomas and Beulah cycle, and poems that worked in some nature and magic.
June 10, 2024
I normally love Rita Dove, but I had a hard time staying engaged with some of these poems
November 9, 2021
What a poet! While sometimes her poems were cryptic and I wanted more notes throughout the collection (the notes that were included I found extremely helpful), it often didn't matter because the language was so beautiful. Here's an example from a less cryptic poem, Weathering Out:
"She liked mornings the best-Thomas gone
to look for work, her coffee flushed with milk,
outside autumn trees blowsy and dripping."...
And then there's this poem, Primer for the Nuclear Age:
"At the edge of the mariner's
map is written: 'Beyond
this point lie Monsters.'
Someone left the light on
in the pantry-there's
a skull in there on the shelf
that talks. Blue eyes
in the air, blue as
an idiot's. Any fear, any
memory will do; and if you've
got a heart at all, someday
it will kill you."
And then there are the historical poems, about history I've never heard of (ex: Parsley, about Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, who ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they couldn't pronounce the letter "r" in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley; The Transport of Slaves from Maryland to Mississippi, when on August 22, 1839 a wagonload of enslaved people broke their chains, killed two white men, and would have escaped, had not an enslaved woman helped the driver mount his horse to ride for help-that one ends with someone saying "Wait. You ain't supposed to act this way." Wow.).
And the autobiographical ones are beautiful too, like Grape Sherbet, which reminded me of my own family's reunions on Memorial Day and how I didn't realize when I was a kid that people I knew could actually die:
"The day? Memorial.
After the grill
Dad appears with his masterpiece-
swirled snow, gelled light.
We cheer. The recipe's
a secret and he fights
a smile, his cap turned up
so the bib resembles a duck.
That morning we galloped
through the grassed-over mounds
and named each stone
for a lost milk tooth. Each dollop
of sherbet, later,
is a miracle,
like salt on a melon that makes it sweeter.
Everyone agrees-it's wonderful!
It's just how we imagined lavender
would taste. The diabetic grandmother
stares from the porch,
a torch
of pure refusal.
We thought no one was lying
there under our feet,
we thought it
was a joke. I've been trying
to remember the taste,
but it doesn't exist.
Now I see why
you bothered,
father."
"She liked mornings the best-Thomas gone
to look for work, her coffee flushed with milk,
outside autumn trees blowsy and dripping."...
And then there's this poem, Primer for the Nuclear Age:
"At the edge of the mariner's
map is written: 'Beyond
this point lie Monsters.'
Someone left the light on
in the pantry-there's
a skull in there on the shelf
that talks. Blue eyes
in the air, blue as
an idiot's. Any fear, any
memory will do; and if you've
got a heart at all, someday
it will kill you."
And then there are the historical poems, about history I've never heard of (ex: Parsley, about Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, who ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they couldn't pronounce the letter "r" in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley; The Transport of Slaves from Maryland to Mississippi, when on August 22, 1839 a wagonload of enslaved people broke their chains, killed two white men, and would have escaped, had not an enslaved woman helped the driver mount his horse to ride for help-that one ends with someone saying "Wait. You ain't supposed to act this way." Wow.).
And the autobiographical ones are beautiful too, like Grape Sherbet, which reminded me of my own family's reunions on Memorial Day and how I didn't realize when I was a kid that people I knew could actually die:
"The day? Memorial.
After the grill
Dad appears with his masterpiece-
swirled snow, gelled light.
We cheer. The recipe's
a secret and he fights
a smile, his cap turned up
so the bib resembles a duck.
That morning we galloped
through the grassed-over mounds
and named each stone
for a lost milk tooth. Each dollop
of sherbet, later,
is a miracle,
like salt on a melon that makes it sweeter.
Everyone agrees-it's wonderful!
It's just how we imagined lavender
would taste. The diabetic grandmother
stares from the porch,
a torch
of pure refusal.
We thought no one was lying
there under our feet,
we thought it
was a joke. I've been trying
to remember the taste,
but it doesn't exist.
Now I see why
you bothered,
father."
March 26, 2008
This is a great set of poems from one of our master poets. Although her poetry generally engages with everyday matters, it does so in a way that fills those subjects with mystery. Largely it's the word choices, which constantly surprise with their freshness -- but it's also the startling perspectives she offers (the Thomas and Beulah poems are heartbreaking in how alone, how separate, they make their married protagonists) and the play with structure and stanza. Just today I read and re-read and re-read the poem "Sunday Greens" to try to fully appreciate what Dove does with the senses there. Poems to return to.
June 16, 2016
Really like Dove's imagery throughout, though many poems didn't speak to me or weren't my style, I guess. I wanted to love this book, but I ended up simply liking it a lot. Many of the poems stood out for a turn of phrase, or an image or two, but not as a whole piece. Thomas and Beulah, though, that's an amazing book and well-told story from two points of view, and it raised my rating of the whole from 3 to 4 stars. Definitely I will re-read this. Not dazzling, but solid and quietly persistent. Note: her poem, Daystar, has to be one of my favorites, ever.
February 12, 2020
I was at a bit of a loss on how to rate this. I appreciate what she has done here -- she is very good at crafting an image or impression of a moment and I liked her themed groupings of poems- the way that each stood alone but still extended an overall message or concept was impressive. The Thomas/Beulah collection that loosely focused on the lives of her grandparents was particularly good. All that being said, I just felt several steps removed from her poems and didn't necessarily have an emotional experience to reading them, which, for me, is something I want in my poetry.
June 7, 2018
Many of Dove's poems are extraordinary, and while a few just did not speak to me, this is still a beautiful collection. I especially liked a group of poems called Thomas and Beulah; they are loosely based on the lives of her grandparents. Highly recommend!
November 12, 2011
Rita Dove’s poetry reads like a narrative. They are so vivid and some are easy to understand. However, the majority of the pieces in this collection are so complex that it takes several reads to grasp an understanding of them. This collection touches on themes of love, race and sometimes mirror historical events as in the piece titled “The Transport of Slaves From Maryland to Mississippi”. I am always searching for historical events that I’ve experienced to write about, not realizing that just because I didn’t live at a certain time I can’t write about it. I just have to do my research, which is what Dove has made me realize from reading this collection. It is the theme that will resonate in my writing. I can only hope my writing is not considered cryptic as I found some of the pieces in this collection to be. For example, “For Kazuko” I’ve read many times and I am still struggling with its meaning. In the lines “…. Why / am I surprised when your lids emerge / from the fragrant paint? Now the couch / is baring its red throat, and now”. This reads so cryptically that I can’t make a connection to the rest of the poem. What does she mean in these lines? I am still searching for an answer.
January 20, 2015
There were many lines that stopped me, and intricate language that I loved. The poems from her first book made some interesting fantastical leaps which I was just reading about in Robert Bly's book Leaping Poetry.
My favorite line from the poem Straw Hat:
To him, work is a narrow grief
and the music afterwards
is like a woman
reaching into his chest
to spread it around.
All in all, quite inspiring.
My favorite line from the poem Straw Hat:
To him, work is a narrow grief
and the music afterwards
is like a woman
reaching into his chest
to spread it around.
All in all, quite inspiring.
May 29, 2008
Still in the process of reading this collection--it contains several of her other books including Yellow House on the Corner, Museum and Thomas and Beulah.
Museum is magical but intense and Thomas and Beulah kind of blew my mind. It's two sets of poems from opposite sides of a love story and the writing is amazing.
Museum is magical but intense and Thomas and Beulah kind of blew my mind. It's two sets of poems from opposite sides of a love story and the writing is amazing.
October 13, 2019
Rita Dove's poetry is so vivid and vibrant. Most of the time when I read any of her poetry I feel like I'm looking at a painting. Its hard to describe the kind of experience I have when I read her poetry. Reading it really is just like an experience, thats all I can describe it as.
October 14, 2012
Rita Dove really knows how to spin intriguing story into her poems, using language that's completely accessible in a beautifully formed voice of naked honesty, opening the reader's insight into communities that may be unfamiliar but always deeply personal and evoking. Yes, I loved this collection!
November 18, 2014
I put flags in all of my books of poetry on poems that I enjoy, and looking at Selected Poems, there were a lot of poems by Rita Dove that I loved. For someone looking for a book of poetry, I highly recommend reading this.
August 14, 2007
one of the most honest and beautifully visceral American poets of the last half of the 20th century.
August 28, 2007
I first read this collection of poems in 2004, but I've read it at least three times since...the images and sound quality in Dove's poems are as close to perfect as I've yet found in poetry.
November 1, 2007
She is the master of the metaphor. Words become the hues of a painters palette in her deft hands and she illustrates the mental canvas with purposed brush strokes.
September 28, 2015
It should be made a crime for people not to know Rita Dove. My hands-down favorite modern poet. And in the running for my favorite ever . . .
June 12, 2008
One of my favorite poets!
February 15, 2009
Rita Dove is so nice to read. She has a methodical, precise way of structuring her poems; every one reflects the most delicate and devoted sense of care.
October 5, 2012
She's the best.
March 25, 2015
Primer for the Nuclear Age and Small Town were my favorites.
June 13, 2015
Dove's imagery is wonderful. The Pulitzer prize-winning Thomas and Beulah poem cycle should be read by all!
January 5, 2016
Deep, complex, but enjoyable to my eyes (and mind). Like reading art.
January 3, 2024
Poems are often seen (read? heard?) as singular creations. An anthology of poetry often reveals themes among them. But this book actually connects them (in fact, she writes on the section introduction that the following "poems tell two sides of a story and are meant to be read in sequence") into an extended narrative.
January 4, 2025
Found this just browsing through the library the other day. Notable poems here include some that feature historical figures such as Benjamin Banneker, Catherine of Alexandria, Boccaccio and others. It also includes a series of poems that follow the perspectives of her grandparents, Thomas and Beulah on their journeys during The Great Migration.
January 17, 2018
Excellent collection! The type of collection that read in a setting ideally each coordinating with the next. I found these absolutely beautiful! I will read this collection again, I feel I can visualize the scenes! Why I love poetry is what I read here!
September 6, 2019
I always find the star rating thing a bit silly, but I digress...
As with most poets, it took me awhile to adjust to her use of language and imagery. However, once I did, I found she has a lovely way of telling stories and capturing the poignancy and delight of living.
As with most poets, it took me awhile to adjust to her use of language and imagery. However, once I did, I found she has a lovely way of telling stories and capturing the poignancy and delight of living.
March 17, 2023
I am astounded by the beauty of Rita Dove's poetry from every phase of her life. I opened it because it was on a shelf of a writing residency I was staying at -- and had to leave. I'm going to buy a copy!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews