University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Winter 1999 Language's "bliss of unfolding" in and through history, autobiography and myth: The poetry of Rita Dove Carol Keyes University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Keyes, Carol, "Language's "bliss of unfolding" in and through history, autobiography and myth: The poetry of Rita Dove" (1999). Doctoral Dissertations. 2107. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2107 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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LANGUAGE’S “BLISS OF UNFOLDING” IN AND THROUGH HISTORY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND MYTH: THE POETRY OF RITA DOVE BY CAROL KEYES B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978 M.A., University of New Hampshire, 1982 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English December, 1999 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number 9953421 ___ ® UMI UMI Microform9953421 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation has been examined and approved. \y f\ Dissertationir£ Director, Charles Simic Professor of English £&i jLl c0/ic,tf Mekeel McBride, Professor of English / Romana Huk, Associate Professor of English John Emest, Associate Professor of English Nancy Lukens, Professor of German Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For Berenice Sibley Reed iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION....................................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 I. THE YELLOW HOUSE ON THE CORNER...........................................................10 II. MUSEUM ...............................................................................................................47 III. THOMAS AND BEULAH......................................................................................83 IV. GRACE NOTES....................................................................................................121 V. MOTHER LOVE....................................................................................................143 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 178 WORKS CONSULTED..................................................................................................184 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT LANGUAGE’S “BLISS OF UNFOLDING” IN AND THROUGH HISTORY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND MYTH: THE POETRY OF RITA DOVE by Carol Keyes University of New Hampshire, December, 1999 This dissertation focuses on the first five books of poetry published by the American poet Rita Dove: The Yellow House on the Corner (1980),Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986; awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987),Grace Notes (1989), and Mother Love (1995). It situates her work within the whole field of American poetic discourse. Dove’s relationship to myriad strands of American ars poetica traditions arises out of patterns of amplification and negotiation worked out in Dove’s poetry in relation to a wide range of such traditions. Thus, the study’s methodology proceeds from the poet T.S. Eliot’s dictum that poets’ writing on poetry—their ars poetica statement in prose—have “a special and permanent value for readers” of poetry. The primary sources of the study, beyond Dove’s work itself and her interviews and prose writings on poetry, are the poetry and ars poetica prose writings of other American poets (past and present) as well as other poets, such as Eliot, and the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. Because Dove is black and female, much has been made of her position within African-American and American women’s poetic traditions. Attention is paid to this phenomenon, and to the scholarship done in those fields, as well as in American poetry generally. More attention is paid the formal poetic practices enacted in the poems of this poet who proclaims, “Language is everything,” and says that it is the “bliss of unfolding” in and through language that engages her most as poet. This study also explores how Dove’s following the bliss of unfolding enacts exploration of three central themes present throughout all of her books— history, autobiography, and myth. The inextricable enmeshment of questions of poetry’s v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. proper functions and imperatives socially and culturally, and of its aesthetic and formal properties, iii Dove’s poetry, is a time-honored, solidly American ars poetica, first expressed in the early American poets Bradstreet and Whitman. The conclusion of the dissertation is that Rita Dove—who herself proclaims time and again her resistance to categorization as other than poet in her relationship to her work—is a quintessential American poet vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION ...[I]t is precisely this address towriters that gives Pound’s criticism a special and permanent value forreaders One learns from him appreciation of literature by learning to understand the preparation, study and training, to which the writer should submit himself. T.S. Eliot, “Introduction,”Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, 1935 The only genuine wellspring of literature is life, life, with all its complexities and contradictions. And the rendering of life into art has to be seamless; it can’t suffer the imposition of ‘doing what’s right’ or anticipating how something will be construed. Of course, the critics come in later and start affixing their labels. Rita Dove, 1996 I’m in favor of nothing that walls out knowledge in the name of purity. There is no way to keep yourself “pure,” be it race-specific, gender-specific, or caste specific. Rita Dove, 1993 Labels only keep us from specificity. There are camps. But I can’t put myself in one. I hope I can’t. Rita Dove, 1999 The 1987 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her third book of poetry, Thomas & Beulah, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995,1 Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and associate editor of the journal of African- American literary studies Callaloo, Rita Dove has published six single volumes of poetry. Her first, The Yellow House on the Corner, was published in 1980; her last,On the Bus with Rosa Parks, in 1999.2 HerSelected Poems appeared in 1993 and is comprised of her 1 Dove is the youngest poet to receive this honor. She is usually characterized as the Gist African American to be named U.S. Poet Laureate, and in fact, she is the first to occupy the position as so titled. However, as she herself