Rita+Dove

Paige P

=﻿  RITA DOVE =  (1952- Present)   Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio. In 1970 she received her B.A. from Miami University. She has included many awards including the Pulitizer Prize in poetry, in 1987. In 1993 to 1995 she was the Poet Laureate of the United States. Then in 1996 she received the Heinz Awards in Arts and Humanities. Next in 1996 she received the National Humanities Medal. After, 1997 she was awarded with Barnes and Nobles Writers for Writers Award. Then in 2006 she Dove received the Commonwealth Award of Distinguished Service. Next, in 2007 she accepted in the Chubb Fellow at Yale University. After, in 2008 she was honored with the Liberty of Virginas Lifetime Award. Then in 2009 she was awarded with the Fullbright Lifetime Achievement Medal and the Premio Capri, which was the International Prize of Island Poetry. Overall, Rita Dove is a very successful woman who has some fantastic poetry.

SOME OF RITA'S POEMS...

**__My Mother Enters the Work Force__**

The path to ABC Business School was paid for by a lucky sign: Alterations, Qualified Seamstress Inquire Within. Tested on Sleeves, hers never puckered -- puffed or sleek, Leg o' or Raglan -- they barely needed the damp cloth to steam them perfect.

Those were the afternoons. Evenings she took in piecework, the treadle machine with its locomotive whir traveling the lit path of the needle through quicksand taffeta or velvet deep as a forest. //And now and now// sang the treadle, //I know, I know....//

And then it was day again, all morning at the office machines, their clack and chatter another journey -- rougher, that would go on forever until she could break a hundred words with no errors -- ah, and then

no more postponed groceries, and that blue pair of shoes! **__Wiring Home__** Lest the wolves loose their whistles and shopkeepers inquire, keep moving, though your knees flush red as two chapped apples, keep moving, head up, past the beggar's cold cup, past the kiosk's trumpet tales of odyssey and heartbreak- until, turning a corner, you stand, staring: ambushed by a window of canaries bright as a thousand golden narcissi.