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| Rita Dove | |
The National Book Foundation is awarding Rita Dove the 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which will be presented by poet Jericho Brown at the National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on November 15.
The Foundation wrote, "Dove's sweeping body of work features 11 books of poetry, including Museum, Grace Notes, Selected Poems, Mother Love, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, American Smooth, Sonata Mulattica, Playlist for the Apocalypse, and her debut collection, The Yellow House on the Corner; a novel, Through the Ivory Gate; a collection of her Poet Laureate lectures titled The Poet's World; a short story collection, Fifth Sunday; and the play The Darker Face of the Earth. She won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah, her third collection of poetry, based loosely on the lives of her maternal grandparents. From 1993 to 1995, Dove served as the first Black Poet Laureate of the United States. [Dove's] career-spanning Collected Poems 1974-2004 was an NAACP Image Award winner and a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry."
Foundation director Ruth Dickey commented: "Rita Dove's oeuvre--from poetry, plays, and songs to essays and fiction--is a testament to her dazzling skill across genre and form. Dove's work transforms the everyday into the remarkable, brilliantly blending music, politics, and, let's not forget, pleasure."
In one of our favorite responses to receiving such an award, Dove told the AP, "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." All the more reason to honor her.