Rita Dove

By: Times-Dispatch Staff | Times-Dispatch
Published: February 10, 2009

Republished from 2000 profiles

Rita Dove fell in love with poetry as a youngster growing up in Akron, Ohio, where she was born in 1952. Bright and eager to learn, she developed a passion for reading, writing and music in a home in which all three were encouraged.

Then, becoming a poet wasn't a goal.

"Though I loved to write," Dove would say later, "I assumed I would some day, you know, 'put away childish things.' That I could do what I loved as an adult had not occurred to me."

She began earning major honors and awards in 1970, when she was named a presidential scholar as one of the top high school graduates in the United States.

She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universitat Tubingen in West Germany and a Fellow at the University of Iowa. While a college student, Dove decided she "wanted to be a writer more than anything else" and to support herself by teaching.

That decision and Dove's talent have made her one of the most honored of contemporary American writers.

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In 1987 she won the Pulitzer Prize for "Thomas and Beulah," a collection of poems inspired by her maternal grandparents.

In 1993, she was tapped to be U.S. poet laureate. She was the first black and, at 40, the youngest person ever to be accorded the honor.

When he appointed her poet laureate, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington called Dove "an accomplished and already widely recognized poet in mid-career whose work gives special promise to explore and enrich contemporary American poetry."

Her first reading as poet laureate, in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, was to a standing-room-only audience.

In 1994, she accepted a second term as the nation's poet laureate. Critics have hailed her work for compassionate storytelling and impressive technical skills.

"What makes Dove's work appealing is her ability to draw real characters holding jobs, raising families, drinking beer, playing music and eating catfish dripping with hot sauce," said one reviewer for the Chicago Tribune.

Dove is an English professor at the University of Virginia, where she began teaching in 1989.

Her many honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and the $250,000 Heinz Award for arts and humanities in 1996.

Her work, Dove says, has placed her in the spotlight as a poet and role model. The national recognition "was a mandate telling me that I could change people's lives, that a poet is a living, breathing person who can bend to help other people."

Dove does not limit herself to poetry. Among her works are short stories, the novel "Through the Ivory Gate" and the play "The Darker Face of the Earth."

Dove's stature as a writer often brings her into the company of the rich and famous. She ushered in the year 2000 with President and Mrs. Clinton and other celebrated guests at the White House. Nevertheless, Dove still considers herself a "midsize-town girl" and counts among her most memorable moments her own parents' recognition for her poems about her grandparents.

After receiving the Pulitzer for "Thomas and Beulah," she visited her parents' home.

"When my parents told me I had gotten it right," she later recalled, "I knew I had touched the heart.

"That I had told the truth. I think that has been my proudest achievement."

Sources: The Richmond Times-Dispatch; Selected Poems. Pantheon Books, 1992.