Rita Dove

1999 Honoree

"Don’t lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going." These are the words from a poem, “Lady Freedom Among Us.” These are the words written by the youngest person and the first African-American to be named Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. These are the words of Rita Dove.

Ms. Dove held the Poet Laureate position, the highest official honor in American letters, from 1993 until 1995. She now serves as Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. 

Her artistic trek began in Akron, Ohio, where she was born in 1952. She attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, as a National Achievement Scholar and graduated with honors with a degree in English in 1973. Following two semesters as a Fulbright scholar in Germany, Ms. Dove joined the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned her master of fine arts degree in 1977.

She received national and critical acclaim in 1980 when her first poetry collection, The Yellow House on the Corner, was published. It was followed by Museum (1983) and Thomas and Beulah (1986). Thomas and Beulah, a collection of interrelated poems loosely based on her grandparents’ life, earned her the 1987 Pulitzer Prize, making her the second African-American poet (after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950) to receive this prestigious award.

Ms. Dove has been named one of ten “Outstanding Women of the Year” by Glamour magazine, and the NAACP honored her with its Great American Artist Award. Also, she received the 1996 Charles Frankel Prize/National Medal in the Humanities, the United States government’s highest honor for writers and scholars. During a recent interview with The Book Report, Ms. Dove, the mother of one, recounted advice from her parents. “As a child, I was told by my mother and father, ‘Don’t assume anything. Look at the situation as clearly as you can... then do the best you can with what you know.’” All of America’s youth can benefit from these words as did one of America’s finest poets.