American Smooth by Rita Dove

American Smooth by Rita Dove

Occasion to celebrate: a new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureateher first in five years. Rita Dove's magnificent poems pay homage to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritagefrom 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. Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar, makes her way through crowds to receive the award. A girl in Harlem studies the flirtations of the adult world, so that someday she too can "pop right out." Fred Astaire once proclaimed, "I just put my feet in the air and move them around." Like Astaire, Dove, speaking intimately to us as we lean in, is such a master that we never notice the labor of creation.

"[Dove] combines a rare lyric talent with sensual celebration and a ceaselessly questing intelligence" The Independent "An outstanding poet of the delicate nuances present in social complexity, of the lyric reflection embedded in the epic journey." The Times Literary Supplement

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. Her recent works include Playlist for the Apocalypse, Sonata Mulattica, and the National Book Award-shortlisted Collected Poems: 1974-2004. In 2021 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives in Charlottesville, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780393059878
ISBN 10	0393059871
Title	American Smooth
Author	Rita Dove
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	2004-09-17
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable