Product Description

"Rita Dove pulls the ultimate dance trick: she makes it look easy." New York Times Book Review An occasion to celebrate: a new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate; her first since On the Bus with Rosa Parks. With the grace of an Astaire, Rita Dove's magnificent poems pay homage to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritage; from the glorious shimmer of an operatic soprano to Bessie Smith's mournful wail; from paradise lost to angel food cake; from hotshots at the local shooting range to the Negro jazz band in World War I whose music conquered Europe before the Allied advance. Like the ballroom-dancing couple of the title poem, smiling and making the difficult seem effortless, Dove explores the shifting surfaces between perception and intimation. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #397176 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This substantial eighth collection from the former U.S. poet laureate recaps almost all of Dove's various projects and roles. The Ohio-born, Virginia-based poet made her name (and landed a Pulitzer Prize) with the sparsely wrought storytelling verse of Thomas and Beulah (1986). Dove displays her vivid narrative gifts and the formal versatility that enables them in "Not Welcome Here," a sequence about black American soldiers (and soldier-musicians) in the First World War; the sequence may be her strongest work in 10 years. Dove's public presence as laureate and educator—highlighted in On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999)—informs the very accessible short poems that begin and end the volume, some of them based on dance steps or musical forms ("Fox Trot," "Lullaby," blues); several may be intended for young audiences ("Count to Ten and We'll Be There"). Short-lined poems such as "Soprano," meanwhile, revive the gift for freestanding, magazine-friendly lyric Dove showed in Grace Notes (1989), while work addressed to her daughter recalls Dove's previous depictions of mothers in myth (the Demeter and Persephone of Mother Love) and autobiographical fact. Though she claims (in "Brown"), "I prefer grand entrances," her most attractive work has been terse and subtle, almost photographic in its poise and reserve, never saying more than she means: the best of her new work returns to those familiar virtues.
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From Booklist
Pulitzer Prize winner and poet laureate Rita Dove is a formidable writer, so one expects if not a brilliant, at least a compelling twelfth poetry collection, and she does not disappoint. American Smooth is aptly titled since the book is infused with dance rhythms, and swings between historical and personal portraits of various Americans, from the "Great War's negro soldiers" to jazz musicians and a young girl from Harlem. Dove uses her highly eclectic interests, her sharp intellect, and her understanding of history and individuals to deliver a collection that speaks through many voices and covers a broad range of thoughts and emotions. She has the uncanny ability to distill things down to an essential idea like desire, flight, or body versus mind. But make no mistake; she is not hooked on abstraction. Dove deftly uses ideas as the springboard for plunging into feelings and experiences in a search for the individual stories that reveal greater universal truths. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
A bravura performance by an incredibly accomplished poet. -- Kansas City Star

Customer Reviews

The Sweetest Word
Rita Dove is a highly acclaimed poet and a former Poet Laureate of the United States with many accolades and honors. Her latest publication, AMERICAN SMOOTH, is a collection of forty-four poems infused with the history of World War I, the enjoyment of dancing, and issues of everyday life.

My favorite selections are "Meditation at Fifty Yards, Moving Target", which makes shooting a gun sound so poetic and "Heart to Heart" which downplays the myths one associates with the heart (shape and color), and all the cliches individuals use in terms of it (from the bottom of my heart), and breaks down what it really is (muscle) and what people need to keep it going (love).

Although I was not able to enjoy the collection in it's entirety, I enjoyed several of the poetic offerings similar to those mentioned above. Those that I did not identify with were well written, its just that I was not able to relate to those pieces, but that is the beauty of poetry, there is something for everyone.

Reviewed by Aiesha Flowers
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Thrilling Collection
Dove's keen, deliberate voice in "American Smooth" is as brilliant as ever. In each poem, the gut-true, but never easy, illuminations of individual subject become gorgeous music. Dove masterfully evokes specific moments of joy and disappointment, beauty and carelessness, honor and neglect. The title, "American Smooth" refers, in part, to a form of ballroom dancing. These poems are just as lean and graceful and sophisticated as any great dancer's best moves. I want to go everywhere Rita Dove's work leads, because when I come back, I'm never quite the same.

No wonder she was Poet Laureate!
If ever there were the slightest doubt as to why Rita Dove is a former Poet Laureate, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and lots of other great things for a poet (particularly a poet these days!) to be, AMERICAN SMOOTH squelches that doubt like a bug at a barbecue. Whether she's writing of Negro doughboys in World War One as they face the issue of Race, along with the other horrors of war, or Salome or Saint Valentine, her pen celebrates her subject with subtle wit and with the incising scalpel-like insight which is the core of the Poet's craft. For this reviewer, the best poems here are those that deal with jazz and dance themes and skillfully utilize those rhythms. The poem about Hattie McDaniel (Mammy from Gone with the Wind) going to her Oscar party is also an absolute delight. Dove's exquisite and perspicacious wit also shines in her selection of quotes from Star Trek: Voyager's clever and charming Vulcan, Tuvok as section epigraphs. While Dove's voice is her own, careful listening and reading will reveal echoes of Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, and William Carlos Williams.