The author is grateful to the Rowohlt Foundation for a residency at Chateau de Lavigny, Switzerland, in 1996. Thanks are also due to the University of Virginia’s Shannon Center for Advanced Studies, as well as to the Heinz Foundation for the 1996 John Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities.

Praise for ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS

A dazzling new collection by the former Poet Laureate of the United States.

In these brilliant poems, Rita Dove treats us to a panoply of human endeavor, shot through with the electrifying jazz of her lyric elegance. From the opening sequence, “Cameos” to the civil rights struggle of the fmal sequence, she. explores the intersection of individual fate and history:

Also by Rita Dove

BOOKS BY RITA DOVE

The Yellow House on the Corner (poems, 1980)

Museum (poems, 1983)

Fifth Sunday (short stories, 1985)

Thomas and Beulah (poems, 1986)

Grace Notes (poems, 1989)

Through the Ivory Gate (novel, 1992)

Selected Poems (1993)

The Darker Face of the Earth (verse drama, 1994)

Mother Love (poems, 1995)

The Poet’s World (essays, 1995)

On the Bus with Rosa Parks (poems, 1999)

About the Author

About the Author

RITA DOVE served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and as Special Consultant for the Library of Congress bicentennial in 1999/2000. Born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio, she has published six poetry collections, among them Thomas and Beulah, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. She is also the author of the novel Through the Ivory Gate and the drama The Darker Face of the Earth, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London, and other theaters. Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, was first performed with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998, and she collaborated with John Williams and Steven Spielberg for the White House Millennium production on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Dove’s honors include Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Mellon fellowships, numerous honorary doctorates, the NAACP Great American Artist Award, Glamour magazine’s “Woman of the Year’ Award, the New York Public Library’s “Literary Lion” citation, and the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, as well as residencies at Tuskegee Institute, the National Humanities Center, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy. Most recently she was the recipient of the Heinz Award, the National Humanities Medal, the Sara Lee Front-runner Award, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.

Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the German writer Fred Viebahn, and their daughter, Aviva.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the recipient of many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal in the Humanities. Her poetry collections Grace Notes and Mother Love are also available in Norton paperback editions.

Copyright

Copyright © 1999 by Rita Dove