On the Bus With Rosa Parks

Sojourners, Nov/Dec 1999

On the Bus With Rosa Parks Rita Dove

Soon after the Clinton-Gore administration took the White House, Rita Dove was invited to read a little something for them at an after-dinner event. She chose her poem "Parsley," based on the abuses of power by the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. There was a tense titter in the room. She was not politically appropriate. She brazenly spoke truth to power. In her newest collection, On the Bus With Rosa Parks, the former Poet Laureate again pushes us to examine the intersections of individual lives with the grand sweep of history. Dove catches the gift of freedom in "Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967," with the line "tell me what you've read that keeps/that half smile afloat/above the collar of your impeccable blouse." From each page, Dove calls us to lift every voice and sing. (W.W. Norton & Company)