Product Description

With this her fourth book of poems, Rita Dove expands her role as a leading voice in contemporary American letters. The title of the collection serves as an umbrella for the intimate concerns expressed in the forty-eight poems; in music, grace notes are those added to the basic melody, the embellishments that—if played or sung at the right moment with just the right touch—can break your heart.

Isn't this what every lyric poem wishes to be, the poet asks as she explored autobiographical events, most from childhood and the cusp of adolescence, and then turns to the shadowy areas of regret and memory. The word as talisman is another of her concerns, and finally, in the section that most typifies the lilt of grace notes, Dove considers the embellishments below the melody of daily life. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #969176 in Books
• Published on: 1991-03-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 88 pages

Review
After Reading Mickey In The Night Kitchen For The Third Time
After Storm
And Counting
Arrow
Ars Poetica
Backyard, 6 A.m.
The Breathing, The Endless News
The Buckeye
Canary
Crab-boil
Dedication
Dialectical Romance
Dog Days, Jerusalem
Fantasy And Science Fiction
Fifth Grade Autobiography
Flash Cards
Genetic Expedition
Genie's Prayer Under The Kitchen Sink
The Goose
Horse And Tree
Hully Gully
In A Neutral City
In The Museum
The Island Women Of Paris
A L'opera
Lint
Medusa
Mississippi
Obbligato
Old Folk's Home, Jerasalem
On The Road To Damascus
The Other Side Of The House
Ozone
Particulars
Pastoral
Poem In Which I Refuse Contemplation
Quaker Oats
The Royal Workshops
Saints
Silos
Sisters
Stitches
Summit Beach, 1921
Turning Thirty, I Contemplate Students Bicycling Home
Uncle Millet
The Wake
Watching Last Year At Marienbad At Roger Haggerty's House
Your Death
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

What will impress readers most about Grace Notes is [Dove's] craftsmanship, the richness of her imagery, the delicacy and sureness of her ear. She is moving steadily toward an absolute mastery of her art. (Minneapolis Star Tribune )

About the Author
Rita Dove, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and herself a musician, lives in Charlottesville, where she is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Aged Grace
What Ms. Dove does here seems dated. Some of her poetry cannot help but resound with the complaint of an aged woman watching young men and remembering death, though the sound of her poems does say something else. They reveal her sheer talent, uncovering a music often missing from a good deal of contemporary poetry. Ms. Dove's true power, however, lies in her shorter poems which are tight concentrations of tied back emotion. They allow the reader to experience the fearful language with his or her own awareness that the subdued grace of sadness lies just a stroke away for each of us in our own lives.