Rita Dove is an acclaimed American poet who was born in 1952. She had great success as a student and was invited to the White House as a Presidential Scholar. She earned an MFA from the University of Iowa, where she met her husband. Dove published her first poetry collection in 1986 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1993 for Thomas and Beulah. She has since received many honors and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, making her the youngest person and first African American to hold that position. Dove currently teaches at the University of Virginia.

1. Rita Dove By: Emily Hepner

2. A Biography Born in 1952 of the daughter of the first black research chemist who broke the race barrier. Was a very excellent student and was one of the most outstanding students high school graduates of her year and was even invited to The White House as a Presidential Scholar. While at a Writer’s Workshop at The University of Iowa she met her husband, Fred Viehban. They married in 1979. They have a daughter, Aviva, who was born in 1983. Her collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, was published in 1986 and in 1993 was awarded The Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Thomas and Beulah is a collection of interrelated poems closely similar to the lives of her grandparents. In 1994 her poem Lady Freedom Among Us was read by Rita at a ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of the U.S. capitol and also at the restoration of the Freedom Statue on The Capitol’s dome in October 1993.

3. A Biography part II Has been awarded 21 honorary doctorates from schools such as, University of Miami(her alma mater), Tuskegee University, Dartmouth College, The University of Pennsylvania and The University of Notre Dame. In 1993 was named one of ten “Most Outstanding Women of the Year” by Glamour magazine. Also, the NAACP honored her with its Great American Artist Award in 1994. Then in 1996 she was awarded with The Heinz Award in The Arts and Humanities. This is one of the largest cash prizes in the world totaling $250,000. The same year she received The Charles Frankel Prize/National Humanities Medal this is the U.S. Government’s highest honors for writers and scholars. She has read he poetry at The White House State dinner and has been featured on CNN, The Today Show, Bill Moyer’s Journal which was a prime time special on PBS dedicated to her and her work.

4. A Biography III Another landmark in her life was when she hosted a gathering of Nobel Laureates in Literature with former President Jimmy Carter. She has also provided text for composers Tania Leon, Bruce Dolphe and Alvin Singleton. Her songs have been performed by The Boston Symphony on a PBS television special. In her free time she studies classical voice and practices her viola da gamba which is a 17th century ancestor of the cello. In 1993 she was appointed Poet Laureate of The United States and Consultant in Poetry at The Library of Congress. This made her the youngest and the first African American to earn this honor in America. Currently she is a Commonwealth Professor of English at The University of Virginia in Charlottesville where she lives with her husband and daughter.

5. Pictures of her

6. Summary! Exit - This poem seems to be about a female who is growing up and leaving because it talks about suitcases and taxicabs and at the end it says how the person to whom the poem is directed to blushed when her mother, who I think is the author, told her what it is like to be a woman. I think maybe this poem is directed to her daughter Aviva.

7. Summary Part II !!! My Mother Enters the Work Force- I think that this poem is written in the mind frame of Rita being a little girl and her remembering what it was like when her mother went to work as a seamstress. The reason I think it’s through the eyes of a little girl is because of the way she describes the sound the sewing machine, she says it goes “ and now and now” and “ I know I know”. And at the end you can see how this effected their because she says “no more postponed groceries” which shows that her family may have had a hard life prior to this job.

8. Influence Her parents were a very big influence on how her writing developed. Both of her parents encouraged her to study all the time and t hey pushed her to have a wide range of reading and this started t a young age so I think that, that really influenced her.

9. Her Voice I think that she could be a voice to Americans and African Americans because she shows how all her hard work through out her childhood got her to where she is now.

10. Modernism I think her writing style is modernism because it doesn’t really follow a certain flow. She does her own thing in her poem. Also. It makes you think about what you just read.

11. Question 4 I think that the history of African Americans made her want to rise above of the oppression that they had. I also think she had inspiration with this coming from her father who was the first African American chemist and was also a pioneer of integration in American industry.

12. #5 I think because of the time she was born she really didn’t have too many struggles being an African American, but I think because of the history that African Americans have been through that gave her, her push to do what she wanted

13. Work$ ~ cited!!!! http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dove/onlinepoems.htm http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/185