Customer Reviews

On the Bus with Rosa Parks: Poems

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At first glance, one may think this book to be a collection of poems dealing with the civil rights movement. Dove illustrates her poetic talent, however, by writing about the struggles in the lives of her fictional characters. In fact, the only references to Rosa Parks are in the chapter named after the book itself. But by looking beneath the surface of Dove's poems, it becomes clear to the reader why "On the Bus With Rosa Parks" is a very appropriate title. Rita Dove uses Rosa Parks as a sort of personification of the recurring themes in the poems. Rosa Parks represents hope, living life to its fullest, and the idea of ordinary people overcoming adversity to do something extraordinary. It's wrong to downplay this work and say Dove was too young to accurately illustrate Rosa Parks' effect on the Civil Rights Movement. For one thing, I think we all know of her significance, no matter what age or race we are. But also, a reader of this book needs to look past the title and see that this is not just about Rosa Parks, it outlines *human* struggle, not just African American struggle. I highly recommend it...

This collection of poems is a fun variety of rhythm, imagery and humour. I found this collection a great daily read.

The first set of poems, "Cameos" are wonderful snapshots of the African American community. Dove does something that is very difficult and takes on the voice of different generations and genders in the same family to let us see inside the group. July 1925 had a great story. "Night" had a great rhythm and "Lake Erie" had wonderful unusual imagery.

As the collection progresses we move to more stand alone poems but they are all there to create new voices. She does what a good poet wants and takes a common theme and makes it new. A perfect example is "Parlor." We are dealing with death but with a bit of humour in the background.

The later poems are from a series on civil rights and Rosa Parks and are just as intriguing as the earlier voices, the views of a culture different from my own.

I took away from this collection that it was not a book about civil rights as so many thought from the title. But that it is a book about "Riding the Bus with Rosa Parks" in the sense that the African American community, especially the female sector, want to join that tradition and to honor what it means to be a part of the sector of the community.

If you want to read a very talented poet then I strongly suggest this collection. As noted, it isn't a collection soley focusing on civil rights. It is an anthology of unique voices.

Rita Dove displays a range of poetic devices and a power of lyrical language that is truly amazing. Although she's black, she speaks to everybody, even an old-fashioned white guy like me.

Rita Dove continues to milk the cow of her racial specialness by writing about an era (or images of an era) she was too young in which to participate (as well as being too safely ensconced in the middle-class to feel its genuine horror). Thus her poems have all the touches of William Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility" but lack the immediacy of the real perils Rosa Parks and her comrades experienced. There is some brilliant writing here; but now the patina of political correctness is wearing thin. Ms. Dove, as all the Iowa City grads, has mastered that somber, priestly, and overly-dramatic voice common to poets who've take on the mantle of greatness and who presume to be the moral authorities in our lives by telling us "the truth" and all things that "truly matter". This book reads as if it's destined to be another book of the Bible, meant to last forever and meant to be the correct gloss on the African-American experience. Instead, its pendantic solemnity returns its focus over and over again to Ms. Dove's self-absorption and to the sad fact that she is, in the final analysis, a person removed from history (by class rather than race) and the mainstream of American life, black or white.

having read rita dove's selected poems, i know she has written good poems (the adolescence poems, in the old neighborhood, the thomas and beuleh poems), but these poems don't have the same quality of her previous works. the poems in this collection don't have the narrative quality that made thomas and beuleh so good. the cameo sequence of poems is simply a poet trying to be difficult or experimental but not succeeding. the political preachiness wears on the reader after a while.

Rita Dove lacks the personal experience and linguistic adeptness to carry us effectively into the texture and atmosphere of Ms. Parks' harrowing and heroic quest. The effort is honorable, but the cult of celebrity has weakened the author's imagination and prosodic ambition.

Here's a former poet, who has turned the corner -- producings works for mere commerical gain.