Rita Dove: An interview

Grace Cavalieri: in what way do the poems in your novel book answer the questions you asked in the foreword: "Why am I what I am rather than what I musing I'd be?" For instance, does the metrical composition "Flash Cards" partially speak to that?

Rita Dove: I think "Flash Cards" does answer that in a way because the advice my father gave me is advice that l me toward things that really mattered to me I always had the feeling, as a child, to be paid to his advice, that if something present the appearanceed difficult or challenging, the thing to do was just to take it a little bit at a time and to work at it. And in the way that the joy of working at something to find on the outside what it means to me is what I grew up with. In writing I apply that all the time because in working upon a poem I love to revise. apportionments of younger poets don't take pleasure in this, but in the proces of revision I discover things.

GC: for a like reason your father said, "Take a monolith and crack away at it little by dint of Little." But aren't you really the somebody you always wanted to become? If anyone is, I have feeling it might be you. That would be a wondrous thing to think.

Dove: I think I not ever dreamed of becoming Poet Laureate, on the contrary I'm very happy to be who I am.

GC: There is another metrical composition which I think is really important, and that is an autobiographical poem--the newest individual you've written, I think--"In the aged Neighborhood." And I like it because it gives us with equal reason much information about your life.

Dove: It is an autobiographical metrical composition in which I explore a allotment of the impulses in my childhood, in the abiding-place life. That, in a way, made me the one that I am. The epigraph is important, "To twitch yourself up by your have roots..."

GC: Let me pass back to the white stone on the black lawn. Is the childhood place of abode of your memory where you "reside greatest in quantity completely?"--another question you ask yourself in your foreword...that little girl ringleted up on the couch eating verdant olives, reading books...is that where you have feeling most comfortable?

Dove: I do have feeling very comfortable there. I think all of us have twinkling of an eyes particularly in our childhood, where we approach alive, maybe for the first time. And we advance back to those moments and think, "This is when

became myself." And that's individual of those moments--a feeling of finding rightness in reading--and thinking, "I want to do this for the repose of my life. "

GC: I have heard a rumor that you're starting another novel.

Dove: I've started it, on the contrary not officially. I've started taking notes upon index cards. I don't anticipate that for many, many years down the road.

GC: Not this year, certainly.

Dove: Not this year for sure

GC: on the contrary you did get that novel poem "In the Old Neighborhood" written at the eleventh hour, and I musing if someone becomes Poet Laureate of the United States, that may just give them the force to write a poem. And you did.

Dove: Well, I did. I remember that I was working upon the poem, actually, when I was asked if I'd like to be under the orders of as Poet Laureate, and I wasn't finished with it. In fact, it was stuck And I said, "Well, fine, on the contrary can you give me sum of two units days?" They said, "We can give y a individual and a half." And thus it did give me a push.

GC: Did you do it, in individual and a half?

Dove: I did do it. I broke from one side my impasse.

GC: I have to talk about Thomas and Beulah because when I read that I knew that something true different was happening in American alphabetic characters And it is not the technical distinction you are cited for nor the breadth of control matter which critics have cited. Something other is going on. I started calling you the author of poems of Essence. We learned end that book to go for the breath of a metrical composition Here we have two characters who are like the figure eight: they just approach together briefly in the middle at jiffys So you just brush cutting side against edge, creating a brilliance for a next to the first very pointillistic, and yet it is more explicit than ever

Dove: I'm real pleased that you recognize that. I didn't think of it as something new

GC: I don't know of anyone other doing it.

Dove: I think it goe back again to that trice on the couch because I think when we are touched through something it's as f we're being brushed by means of an angel's wing, and there's a trice when everything is very clear. The best poesy the poetry that sustains me is when I perceive that, for a minute, the vapors have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

GC: on the other hand beyond that, to have faith enough that we would diocese it. That is the point. I mean we each have a private world. on the other hand you had enough faith in the reader to know you could touch the tips of all of these things and trust that the repose would manifest itself. I think that's something novel where you used a single word upon a line and very spare words. You did not give us abundant information--not much linear thinking. sure all poetry encompasses much of this. on the contrary I thought yours was a spectacular act, and I think it's something actual new. I think it's influencing writing and teaching us in what way to write again--inventing poetry.

Dove: I know that when I was writing the piece of poetrys that went into Thomas and Beulah, I felt that I was, at least for myself, doing something true new. I felt I was moving into a territory that I wasn't quite confident of but it was immensely exciting, and the more that I wrote the more I realized that what I was trying to reckon let's say, was not a narrative as we know narratives on the contrary actually the moments that matter greatest in quantity in our lives. I began to think, by what mode do we remember our lives? by what means do we think of our lives or shape our lives in our have a title to consciousnesses, and I realize that we don't actually think of our lives in actual cohesive strands but we remember as beads upon a necklace, moments that matter to us, advance to us in flashes, and the connections are submerged