Current:Home > InvestPoet Rita Dove to receive an honorary National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement -Wealth Pursuit Network
Poet Rita Dove to receive an honorary National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement
View
Date:2025-04-15 08:27:47
NEW YORK (AP) — Poet Rita Dove has a sharp, simple goal in response to receiving a National Book Award for lifetime achievement: “I want it to be a milestone, not a tombstone.”
“It may seem like a rather macabre metaphor, but I simply meant — knock on wood — that I haven’t reached the end of my journey as an artist. I’m still observing, questioning, exploring,” she adds.
The National Book Foundation, the nonprofit which presents the book awards, announced Friday that Dove is this year’s winner of its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Edmund White and Art Spiegelman among others. Dove, 71, has been a published author for 50 years, her notable books including her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection “Thomas and Beulah,” inspired by her maternal grandparents.
She is best known for her poetry, but has worked in other art forms and is currently planning a memoir. She has published short fiction, the novel “Through the Ivory Gate,” the play “The Darker Face of the Earth” and even collaborated with the Oscar-winning film composer John Williams on the song cycle “Seven for Luck.”
“Rita Dove’s oeuvre — from poetry, plays, and songs to essays and fiction — is a testament to her dazzling skill across genre and form,” Ruth Dickey, the National Book Foundation’s executive director, said in a statement. “Dove’s work transforms the everyday into the remarkable, brilliantly blending music, politics, and, let’s not forget, pleasure.”
The National Book Award ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 15 in Manhattan, with Drew Barrymore hosting. Besides the tribute to Dove, winners will be announced in five competitive categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation and young people’s literature. The foundation also will present a Literarian Award to Paul Yamazaki, the longtime buyer at San Francisco’s famed City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Poet and City Lights co-founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died two years ago, received the inaugural Literarian prize in 2005.
Dove, a native of Akron, Ohio, has long excelled academically and professionally. As one of the country’s top high school students, she was named a Presidential Scholar. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Miami, in Ohio, and later received a master’s from the prominent creative writing program at the University of Iowa. In 1993, in her early 40s, she became the youngest person at the time appointed U.S. poet laureate and the first Black writer to hold the position.
Dove has received so many previous honors, lifetime and competitive, that it’s almost surprising the book foundation didn’t get around to her sooner. Besides the Pulitzer, she has received both a National Humanities Medal and National Medal of Arts, an NAACP Image Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and a gold medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, along with honorary doctorates at dozens of colleges.
A fellow Pulitzer winner, poet Jericho Brown, will introduce Dove at the National Book Awards.
Dove’s influences range from Shakespeare to a parody of William Blake that appeared in Mad magazine. Her subjects are equally eclectic, whether her grandmother dusting and bringing “dark wood to life,” the “trim name” and daring dream of Rosa Parks, or the poet’s own love for dancing. When her house in Charlottesville, Virginia, was badly burned by a lightning strike in 1998, she and her husband Fred Viebahn learned ballroom dancing as a way to heal: They even added a ballroom space when the home was rebuilt. She called her first poem written after the fire “Foxtrot Fridays,” which reads in part:
Thank the stars there’s a day
each week to tuck in
the grief, lift your pearls, and
stride brush stride
quick-quick with a
heel-ball-toe.
Authors often speak of declining values and standards, but Dove welcomes the evolution of poetry since she started out. For a Black woman poet, the field once seemed restricted to one favorite at a time, with the expectation that the poet would address “the Black experience,” she recalls. Dove now sees far more possibilities, and praises such organizations as Cave Canem, a New York City-based organization that supports young Black poets. Dove herself has guided young writers as a creative writing teacher at the University of Virginia, while also working to expand poetry’s appeal during her time as the U.S. laureate.
“People seem frightened of poetry, and somehow separate it from their lives, when, in fact, poetry is the essence of life,” she says.
veryGood! (9)
Related
- Mets have visions of grandeur, and a dynasty, with Juan Soto as major catalyst
- Minnesota woman made $117,000 running illegal Facebook lottery, police say
- No Labels push in closely divided Arizona fuels Democratic anxiety about a Biden spoiler
- T-Squared: Tiger Woods, Justin Timberlake open a New York City sports bar together
- 'Kraven the Hunter' spoilers! Let's dig into that twisty ending, supervillain reveal
- Pilot killed when crop-dusting plane crashes in North Dakota cornfield, officials say
- UK’s new online safety law adds to crackdown on Big Tech companies
- Sophie Turner, Taylor Swift step out for girls night amid actress' divorce from Joe Jonas
- Costco membership growth 'robust,' even amid fee increase: What to know about earnings release
- 'Humanity has opened the gates of hell,' UN Secretary-General says of climate urgency
Ranking
- US appeals court rejects Nasdaq’s diversity rules for company boards
- DeSantis plays up fight with House speaker after McCarthy said he is not on the same level as Trump
- You can update your iPhone with iOS 17 Monday. Here's what to know.
- Judge orders Hunter Biden to appear in person at arraignment on federal gun charges
- North Carolina trustees approve Bill Belichick’s deal ahead of introductory news conference
- Chinese officials voice faith in economy and keep interest rates steady as forecasts darken
- Beverly Hills bans use of shaving cream, silly string on Halloween night
- Highway traffic pollution puts communities of color at greater health risk
Recommendation
Man can't find second winning lottery ticket, sues over $394 million jackpot, lawsuit says
Angelica Ross says Ryan Murphy ghosted her, alleges transphobic comments by Emma Roberts
Kraft issues recall of processed American cheese slices due to potential choking hazard
'Trapped and helpless': ‘Bachelorette’ contestants rescued 15 miles off coast after boat sank
Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
Man set to be executed for 1996 slaying of University of Oklahoma dance student
QDOBA will serve larger free 3-Cheese Queso sides in honor of National Queso Day
'Wellness' is a perfect novel for our age, its profound sadness tempered with humor