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calicolavender's review against another edition
5.0
This may possibly be the best poetry book I’ve ever read. It’s inspired me to take more observation of the world around me and write poetry whenever it comes to me, something I fell out of habit to do a long time ago.
jheinemann287's review against another edition
5.0
At this point, this collection is a dear friend. I've read a poem or two each morning since the height of my quarantine aimlessness in mid June. Dove has been my constant, startling me, making me pause and reread and dog-ear pages, pushing me to furiously Google figures from history or mythology or movies. Meanwhile, my back has given me trouble on and off since this summer, and I can't tell you how many mornings, at like 5AM, I've waited for water to boil while lying as flat as possible on my kitchen floor and googling something from one of Dove's poems. I've read about David Walker and Benjamin Banneker and Claudette Colvin and Hattie McDaniel. I found out what a "pithos" is ("Your spine is / a flower") and read an article comparing Joaquin Phoenix's Joker to Christian Schad's Pigeon-Chested Man ("its crests and fins / a colony of birds, trying / to get out"). The other morning, after reading Dove's "The Seven Veils of Salomé," I ended up watching the end of Salome (1953) on Youtube, starting with Rita Hayworth's dance for Herod ("O Mother, what else is a girl to do?").
In seven volumes of poetry from 1980 to 2004 (!!), Dove's writing spans from history to mythology to art, traverses from her childhood in the American midwest to her travels across Europe, arches wide and then gets real personal. It feels a little weird to finally put this book back on the shelf, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to it.
***
"Bee vomit, he said once, / that's all honey is, so that / I could not put my tongue to its / jellied flame without tasting / regurgitated blossoms" (4).
"Who discovered usefulness? / Who forgot how to sing, simply?" (108).
"Like all art / useless and beautiful, like / sailing in air, / things happened / to her" (142).
"I won't promise anything. I am a magic / that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well" (199).
"O these / trees, shedding all / over themselves. / Only a fool / would think such frenzy / beautiful" (319).
"But I'm not sad -- on the way back / through the twigs I glimpsed / in a broken windowbox by the roadside / mums: / stunned lavenders and pinks / dusted with soot. / I am a little like them, / heavy-headed, / rough curls open to the rain" (374).
In seven volumes of poetry from 1980 to 2004 (!!), Dove's writing spans from history to mythology to art, traverses from her childhood in the American midwest to her travels across Europe, arches wide and then gets real personal. It feels a little weird to finally put this book back on the shelf, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to it.
***
"Bee vomit, he said once, / that's all honey is, so that / I could not put my tongue to its / jellied flame without tasting / regurgitated blossoms" (4).
"Who discovered usefulness? / Who forgot how to sing, simply?" (108).
"Like all art / useless and beautiful, like / sailing in air, / things happened / to her" (142).
"I won't promise anything. I am a magic / that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well" (199).
"O these / trees, shedding all / over themselves. / Only a fool / would think such frenzy / beautiful" (319).
"But I'm not sad -- on the way back / through the twigs I glimpsed / in a broken windowbox by the roadside / mums: / stunned lavenders and pinks / dusted with soot. / I am a little like them, / heavy-headed, / rough curls open to the rain" (374).
das737's review against another edition
Weirdly, this review runs the risk of me airing my grievances about collected volumes of poetry: there's something about the material value of slim volumes, the experience of finding one that packs the punch of a full novel. This effect seems dulled to me when poems are formatted as they are here, where one poem begins immediately after another ends, instead of on a new page—a sure way to save paper, along with the slightly oversized pages. But this does do something to the experience of reading the poems themselves, something I haven't quite been able to pin down.
That aside, this was a stellar read. The sustained run from Thomas and Beulah through On the Bus with Rosa Parks is really a major accomplishment—seeing her fully wield the power of a poem cycle, which she flirts with in her first two books, and then blow said power of poem cycle up to capture the stories of her family as well as historical moments and intimate memories. That said, I found American Smooth to be bloated, but that could very well be the consequence of encountering it in a collected rather than as its own volume. It's weird to reflect on how the way we encounter literature could alter our perceptions of it, but that's neither here nore there.
Individual ratings:
The Yellow House on the Corner: 3/5
Museum: 4/5
Thomas and Beulah: 4.5/5
Grace Notes: 5/5
Mother Love: 5/5
On the Bus with Rosa Parks: 4.5/5
American Smooth: 3.5/5
That aside, this was a stellar read. The sustained run from Thomas and Beulah through On the Bus with Rosa Parks is really a major accomplishment—seeing her fully wield the power of a poem cycle, which she flirts with in her first two books, and then blow said power of poem cycle up to capture the stories of her family as well as historical moments and intimate memories. That said, I found American Smooth to be bloated, but that could very well be the consequence of encountering it in a collected rather than as its own volume. It's weird to reflect on how the way we encounter literature could alter our perceptions of it, but that's neither here nore there.
Individual ratings:
The Yellow House on the Corner: 3/5
Museum: 4/5
Thomas and Beulah: 4.5/5
Grace Notes: 5/5
Mother Love: 5/5
On the Bus with Rosa Parks: 4.5/5
American Smooth: 3.5/5
jonjeffryes's review against another edition
4.0
Rita Dove is a great story-telling poet with a wide range of interests that make for an eclectic and entertaining collected works. I didn't connect with some of the earliest collections, but was glad I stuck with the book--beautiful, insightful writing.
endearingsalt's review against another edition
3.0
Since this is a collection, my rating is an amalgamation of all the books therein. Mother Love is my favorite, and were I rating that one on its own, my rating would be 4 stars.
I'm ashamed to say I had never heard of Rita Dove before happening upon this volume on my library's ebook site. It's taken me almost 3 weeks to read through the whole thing, and I know that my read has been on the shallow side—this is my first time becoming acquainted with Rita Dove, and I expect to return to her works later on in more depth.
I'm ashamed to say I had never heard of Rita Dove before happening upon this volume on my library's ebook site. It's taken me almost 3 weeks to read through the whole thing, and I know that my read has been on the shallow side—this is my first time becoming acquainted with Rita Dove, and I expect to return to her works later on in more depth.
lizziethereader's review
2.0
I can't quite remember what led me to pick up this collection, but I must have read one of Rita Doves poems somewhere and really liked it. Sadly, this wasn't the case for most of the poems in this collection (mostly because I'm not hugely into narrative poems). There were a handful I really liked, and I liked the overall experience of reading this collection, but most of the poems just were not for me.
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