Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, the second of four children. An extremely bright girl, Rita was encouraged to learn all she could by her parents. Her father, a research chemist who broke the color barrier in the tire industry, was a particular inspiration to her. She has been quoted as saying, "My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends, and isn't that great."

In 1970, Dove was named a Presidential Scholar for her academic achievements in high school. While her love for writing developed early in life, it was only in college that it became her passion. She graduated summa cum laude from Miami University in Ohio, won a Fulbright scholarship to attend the University of Tübingen in West Germany, and in 1977 graduated with an M.F.A. from the acclaimed University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. While in Germany, Dove met the German writer Fred Viebahn, whom she married in 1979.

In 1980 Dove published her first collection of poetry, The Yellow House on the Corner. This was followed by Museum (1983) and Thomas and Beulah (1986). The latter volume, a collection of poems inspired by the lives of Dove's grandparents, features many of her most famous poems, such as "Dusting," "Company," and "Variations on Guilt" and earned her the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. Dove was only the second African-American poet to win the award. (In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks had received the prize.)

Other works followed, and Dove's reputation continued to grow. In 1985, she published a book of short stories (Fifth Sunday); she saw the publication of her first novel in 1992 (Through the Ivory Gate); and in 1996 her verse drama, The Darker Face of the Earth, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was later performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Royal National Theatre in London, among other venues. Dove added to her body of published poetry with Grace Notes in 1989 and Mother Love in 1995. Her most recent collection, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, which contains "Testimonial," among other notable works, appeared in 1999.

Dove has won large measures of both popular and critical success across her career. She has been featured on CNN, NBC, numerous programs on PBS (including Sesame Street), and the radio program A Prairie Home Companion. She has received numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including the Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, and has received more than twenty honorary doctorates. Perhaps her greatest distinction, though, came in 1993 and 1994, when she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for two consecutive terms. As Laureate, Dove encouraged the creation of children's poetry and greater experimentation in art that combines different media—music, visuals, and verse. (Dove's interest in the latter project can be seen most recently in Seven for Luck, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, which premiered at the Tanglewood music festival in 1998, and in her participation in "America's Millennium," the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, at which Dove read an original poem, accompanied by John Williams's music, for Stephen Spielberg's documentary The Unfinished Journey.) Music is indeed an important element in much of Dove's verse. In poems such as "Canary," she draws inspiration and subject matter from the performance, experience, and people of music. Dove is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Dove's verse, for the most part eschewing rhetorical flourishes, draws much of its power from its immediacy and intimacy: memories and insights are given tangible context, and ideas are conveyed with arresting images that fire the imagination.

Works by Dove

The Yellow House on the Corner (1980)

Museum (1983)

Fifth Sunday (1985)

Thomas and Beulah (1986)

Grace Notes (1989)

Through the Ivory Gate (1992)

Selected Poems (1993)

The Darker Face of the Earth (1994)

Mother Love (1995)

On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999)

American Smooth (2004)

Dove and the Web

For essays on Rita Dove and her works, visit the Modern American Poetry site, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dove/dove.htm.

The Academy of American Poets.