Rita Dove: An interview

American Poetry Review, The, Mar 1995 by Cavalieri, Grace

Grace Cavalieri: How do the poems in your new book answer the questions you asked in the foreword: "Why am I what I am rather than what I thought I'd be?" For instance, does the poem "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 led me toward things that really mattered to me. I always had the feeling, as a child, due to his advice, that if something seemed difficult or challenging, the thing to do was just to take it a little bit at a time and to work at it. And so the joy of working at something to find out what it means to me, is what I grew up with. In writing I apply that all the time because in working on a poem I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.

GC: So your father said, "Take a monolith and crack away at it little by Little." But aren't you really the person you always wanted to become? If anyone is, I feel it might be you. That would be a wonderful thing to think.

Dove: I think I never dreamed of becoming Poet Laureate, but I'm very happy to be who I am.

GC: There is another poem which I think is really important, and that is an autobiographical poem--the newest one you've written, I think--"In the Old Neighborhood." And I like it because it gives us so much information about your life.

Dove: It is an autobiographical poem in which I explore a lot of the impulses in my childhood, in the home life. That, in a way, made me the person that I am. The epigraph is important, "To pull yourself up by your own roots..."

GC: Let me go back to the white rock on the black lawn. Is the childhood home of your memory where you "reside most completely?"--another question you ask yourself in your foreword...that little girl curled up on the couch eating green olives, reading books...is that where you feel most comfortable?

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

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

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

Dove: I've started it, but not officially. I've started taking notes on 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: But you did get that new poem "In the Old Neighborhood" written at the eleventh hour, and I thought, if someone becomes Poet Laureate of the United States, that may just give them the energy to write a poem. And you did.

Dove: Well, I did. I remember that I was working on the poem, actually, when I was asked if I'd like to serve as Poet Laureate, and I wasn't finished with it. In fact, it was stuck. And I said, "Well, fine, but can you give me two days?" They said, "We can give y a one and a half." And so it did give me a push.

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

Dove: I did do it. I broke through my impasse.

GC: I have to talk about Thomas and Beulah because when I read that I knew that something very different was happening in American letters. And it is not the technical excellence you are cited for nor the breadth of subject matter which critics have cited. Something else is going on. I started calling you the Poet of Essence. We learned through that book to go for the breath of a poem. Here we have two characters who are like the figure eight: they just come together briefly in the middle at moments. So you just brush edge against edge, creating a brilliance for a second, very pointillistic, and yet it is more explicit than ever.

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

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

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

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

Dove: I know that when I was writing the poems that went into Thomas and Beulah, I felt that I was, at least for myself, doing something very new. I felt I was moving into a territory that I wasn't quite sure of but it was immensely exciting, and the more that I wrote the more I realized that what I was trying to tell, let's say, was not a narrative as we know narratives but actually the moments that matter most in our lives. I began to think, how do we remember our lives? How do we think of our lives or shape our lives in our own consciousnesses, and I realize that we don't actually think of our lives in very cohesive strands but we remember as beads on a necklace, moments that matter to us, come to us in flashes, and the connections are submerged.