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A review by jheinemann287
Collected Poems: 1974-2004 by Rita Dove
5.0
At this point, this collection is a dear friend. I've read a poem or two each morning since the height of my quarantine aimlessness in mid June. Dove has been my constant, startling me, making me pause and reread and dog-ear pages, pushing me to furiously Google figures from history or mythology or movies. Meanwhile, my back has given me trouble on and off since this summer, and I can't tell you how many mornings, at like 5AM, I've waited for water to boil while lying as flat as possible on my kitchen floor and googling something from one of Dove's poems. I've read about David Walker and Benjamin Banneker and Claudette Colvin and Hattie McDaniel. I found out what a "pithos" is ("Your spine is / a flower") and read an article comparing Joaquin Phoenix's Joker to Christian Schad's Pigeon-Chested Man ("its crests and fins / a colony of birds, trying / to get out"). The other morning, after reading Dove's "The Seven Veils of Salomé," I ended up watching the end of Salome (1953) on Youtube, starting with Rita Hayworth's dance for Herod ("O Mother, what else is a girl to do?").
In seven volumes of poetry from 1980 to 2004 (!!), Dove's writing spans from history to mythology to art, traverses from her childhood in the American midwest to her travels across Europe, arches wide and then gets real personal. It feels a little weird to finally put this book back on the shelf, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to it.
***
"Bee vomit, he said once, / that's all honey is, so that / I could not put my tongue to its / jellied flame without tasting / regurgitated blossoms" (4).
"Who discovered usefulness? / Who forgot how to sing, simply?" (108).
"Like all art / useless and beautiful, like / sailing in air, / things happened / to her" (142).
"I won't promise anything. I am a magic / that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well" (199).
"O these / trees, shedding all / over themselves. / Only a fool / would think such frenzy / beautiful" (319).
"But I'm not sad -- on the way back / through the twigs I glimpsed / in a broken windowbox by the roadside / mums: / stunned lavenders and pinks / dusted with soot. / I am a little like them, / heavy-headed, / rough curls open to the rain" (374).
In seven volumes of poetry from 1980 to 2004 (!!), Dove's writing spans from history to mythology to art, traverses from her childhood in the American midwest to her travels across Europe, arches wide and then gets real personal. It feels a little weird to finally put this book back on the shelf, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to it.
***
"Bee vomit, he said once, / that's all honey is, so that / I could not put my tongue to its / jellied flame without tasting / regurgitated blossoms" (4).
"Who discovered usefulness? / Who forgot how to sing, simply?" (108).
"Like all art / useless and beautiful, like / sailing in air, / things happened / to her" (142).
"I won't promise anything. I am a magic / that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well" (199).
"O these / trees, shedding all / over themselves. / Only a fool / would think such frenzy / beautiful" (319).
"But I'm not sad -- on the way back / through the twigs I glimpsed / in a broken windowbox by the roadside / mums: / stunned lavenders and pinks / dusted with soot. / I am a little like them, / heavy-headed, / rough curls open to the rain" (374).