LIBRARY BLOG

The Poetry Nook

Celebrating Women’s History Month with Rita Dove and Amanda Gorman

Since before Sappho (630-570 BCE) in Ancient Greece, women around the world have been using their voices to tell their stories through poetry. This Women’s History Month, we will explore the verse of two of America’s own, Rita Dove and Amanda Gorman. 

 Rita Dove is a mid-westerner, was raised by parents in Akron, Ohio, who encouraged her to chase her dream of writing poetry. She traveled around the country and the world in the pursuit of her education, earning degrees from the University of Miami and the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop and she even had the opportunity to go to Germany on a Fullbright Scholarship. 

Her love of poetry, and her talent for writing it, did not go unnoticed. In 1987, she won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature for her book Thomas and Belulah. From 1993-1995, Dove served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States, making her the first female, the first Black, and the youngest Poet Laureate to date. She also had the opportunity to serve the nation again in 1999-2000 as a Special Bicentennial Consultant to the Library of Congress. This is only the beginning of the list of many accolades that she has earned over the years. 

Dove’s writing was largely inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke, who in his Letters to a Young Poet, wrote, “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.” She used this advice to focus on her own daily life and those of others, exploring the beauty in the mundane and the extraordinary in the ordinary in ways that resonant with us still today. 

Poetry by Rita Dove

Dawn Revisited 

Imagine you wake up 

with a second chance: The blue jay 

hawks his pretty wares 

and the oak still stands, spreading 

glorious shade. If you don’t look back, 

the future never happens. 

How good to rise in sunlight, 

in the prodigal smell of biscuits – 

eggs and sausage on the grill. 

The whole sky is yours
 

to write on, blown open 

to a blank page. Come on, 

shake a leg! You’ll never know 

who’s down there, frying those eggs, 

if you don’t get up and see. 

Fox 

She knew what 

she was and so 

was capable 

of anything 

anyone 

could imagine. 

She loved what 

she was, there 

for the taking, 

imagine. 
 

She imagined 

nothing. 

She loved 

nothing more 

than what she had, 

which was enough 

for her, 

which was more 

than any man 

could handle. 

Another woman making history in the U.S. is Amanda Gorman. At the young age of 18, she was named the first Youth Poet Laureate in the nation in 2017. The position gave Gorman, then already a published poet, a spot on the world stage where she could share her love of the written word and encourage other young people to become activists. Now, a Harvard graduate, Gorman is still making news by being only the sixth poet in history to read at presidential inauguration. This put her in the ranks of Robert Frost (John F. Kennedy, 1961), Maya Angelou (Bill Clinton, 1993), Miller Williams (Bill Clinton, 1997), Elizabeth Alexander (Barack Obama, 2009), and Richard Blanco (Barack Obama, 2013). She also made history on February 7, 2021, by being the first every poet to recite their work at the Super Bowl.  

Poetry by Amanda Gorman

Recommended Books and Documentaries

References

– Naomi Hurtienne Magola, Youth Services Librarian

Important Links