Rita Dove

Detailing the volatile relationship between the black violinist George Bridgetower and Beethoven, this is a "masterful collection" (Los Angeles Times). The son of a white woman and an “African Prince,” George Polgreen Bridgetower (1780–1860) travels to Vienna to meet “bad-boy” genius Ludwig van Beethoven. The great composer’s subsequent sonata is originally dedicated to the young mulatto, but George, exuberant with acclaim, offends Beethoven over a woman. From this crucial encounter evolves a grandiose yet melancholy poetic tale.

An occasion to celebrate: a new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate; her first since On the Bus with Rosa Parks. With the grace of an Astaire, Rita Dove's magnificent poems pay homage to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritage; from the glorious shimmer of an operatic soprano to Bessie Smith's mournful wail; from paradise lost to angel food cake; from hotshots at the local shooting range to the Negro jazz band in World War I whose music conquered Europe before the Allied advance. Like the ballroom-dancing couple of the title poem, smiling and making the difficult seem effortless, Dove explores the shifting surfaces between perception and intimation.

A new collection by a much celebrated poet, former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove. From the opening sequence, "Cameos," which probes the private griefs and dreams of a working-class family, to the emblematic grace of a living legend like Rosa Parks, who acquiesced to public life in order to "serve the public good," these poems explore the intersection of individual fates with the grand arc of history. If there are heroes, Dove maintains, they continually reinvent themselves, as each of us must do each morning.

xiv,494p. ; 25 cm

A play in verse about a white woman who has a black child by a slave in pre-Civil War South Carolina. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and is the present U. S. poet laureate. This verse play, based on the story of Oedipus & placed within the context of slavery, is set on a plantation in antebellum South Carolina.

"In 1987 Rita Dove became one of the youngest writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry - and only the second African-American to do so. Now in her radiant first novel, Dove combines her remarkable storytelling ability with what critic Arnold Rampersad has praised in her poetry as an "almost uncanny sense of peace and grace."" "It is the tail end of the Vietnam era, and Virginia King, most recently a puppeteer with an experimental theater troupe, returns to her hometown in the Midwest to work as an "artist in residence" at a local public school. As her puppets win the hearts of her students, memories of her own childhood surface, triggering a chain of recollections - from grade school, with its subtle and not-so-subtle bigotries, to college where, as a cellist, she became involved with a brilliant and enigmatic fellow musician. But what startles her most is a visit to an elderly aunt, whose revelations about Virginia's family threaten to shatter the healing these memories bring. Seamlessly weaving together past and present, Through the Ivory Gate renders an unforgettable portrait of a period in American life and offer in Virginia King one of the most endearing heroines to emerge in contemporary fiction."--BOOK JACKET.

The Event -- Variation on Pain -- Jiving -- Straw Hat -- Courtship -- Refrain -- Variation on Guilt -- Nothing Down -- The Zeppelin Factory -- Under the Viaduct, 1932 -- Lightnin' Blues -- Compendium -- Definition in the Face of Unnamed Fury -- Aircraft -- Aurora Borealis -- Variation on Gaining a Son -- One Volume Missing -- The Charm -- Gospel -- Roast Possum -- The Stroke -- The Satisfaction Coal Company -- Thomas at the Wheel.

Grade 11

Contains: [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]( Mark Twain -- from Life on the Mississippi / Mark Twain -- The Negro speaks of rivers / Langston Hughes -- Narrative of Daniel Fisher / Daniel Fisher -- Three days of forest, a river, free / Rita Dove -- The outlaws / Selma Lagerlöf -- from Nine pounds of luggage / Maud Parrish -- Freedom / William Stafford -- from Mississippi solo / Eddy Harris.