Thomas and Beulah: Poems [Paperback]

Rita Dove (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The poems in this unusual book tell a story, forming a narrative almost like a realistic novel. Read in sequence as intended, they tell of the lives of a married black couple (not unlike Dove's own grandparents) from the early part of the century until their deaths in the 1960s, a period that spans the great migration of blacks from rural south to urban north. But this is merely the social backdrop to the story of a marriage. Two separate sequences offer two views of the couple's lives: the first, "Mandolin," consists of 23 poems giving Thomas's side, and "Canary in Bloom" gives Beulah's in 21 poems. Together they paint a detailed, poetically dense portrait of two lives in all their frailty, dignity and complexity. The collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987.

Review

A remarkable book. . . . Dove has planed away unnecessary matter: pure shapes, her poems exhibit the thrift that Yeats called the sign of a perfected manner. -- New York Review of Books

Product Details

• Paperback: 79 pages
• Publisher: Carnegie-Mellon University Press; First Edition, First Printing edition (September 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887480217
• ISBN-13: 978-0887480218
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Poetry
  • #65 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry

More About the Author

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and, more recently, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1997 Sara Lee Frontrunner Award, the 1997 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 1996 National Humanities Medal. In 2006 she received the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (together with Anderson Cooper, John Glenn, Mike Nichols and Queen Noor of Jordan), in 2007 she became a Chubb Fellow at Yale University, in 2008 she was honored with the Library of Virginia's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2009 she received the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal and the Premio Capri (the international prize of the Italian "island of poetry").

Ms. Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. A 1970 Presidential Scholar, she received her B.A. summa cum laude from Miami University of Ohio and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She also held a Fulbright scholarship at the Universität Tübingen in Germany. She has published the poetry collections The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), essays under the title The Poet's World (1995), and the play The Darker Face of the Earth, which had its world premiere in 1996 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London, and other theatres. Seven for Luck, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998. For "America's Millennium," the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Ms. Dove contributed -- in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by John Williams's music -- a poem to Steven Spielberg's documentary The Unfinished Journey. She is the editor of The Best American Poetry 2000, and from January 2000 to January 2002 she wrote a weekly column, "Poet's Choice," for The Washington Post. Her latest poetry collection, Sonata Mulattica, was published by W.W. Norton & Company in the spring of 2009. Most recently she edited "The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry" (2011).

Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the German writer Fred Viebahn. They have a grown daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn.

More biographical information is available at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous., May 17, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thomas and Beulah: Poems (Paperback)

Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah (1987, Carnegie Mellon)

Rita Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with Thomas and Beulah, and it's pretty easy to see why. Dove's poetic biography of her ancestors is hyperkinetic, jazz-infused poetry rooted in the Depression, full of life, sass, and vinegar. Nothing is sacred, from motherhood ("She dreams the baby's so small she keeps/misplacing it") to death ("Later he'll say Death stepped right up/to shake his hand, then squeezed/until he sank to his knees."), and some contemporary jabs mixed in ("...Joanna saying/'Mother, we're Afro-Americans now!'/What did she know about Africa?"). Dove has been one of America's shining poetic voices for two decades now, and there's never not a right time to go back and revisit this stunning collection. Perhaps her strongest work. ****

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What is Left Out, October 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Thomas and Beulah: Poems (Paperback)

What I find particularly appealing in this collection of poetry is what moments, memories, or emotions get left out. Thomas's perspective of an event is often undercut by Beulah's rendition of the same event. Situations that Beulah reflects on painfully have even been omitted entirely in Thomas's section of poems and vice versa. These omissions work to expose the "limitedness" of the individual perspective, how two people can function in a relationship as a unit and alone. Dove writes of longing, shame, hope, and love without reverting to nostalgic reminiscence. Each of the poems sparks with immediacy created by the brillance of Dove's language, at once common and suductive.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, April 26, 2004

By 

Derek (College Station, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas and Beulah: Poems (Paperback)

Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah is a fantastic story of two people's journey through life together. It is broken up into two sections: Mandolin, and Canary in Bloom. The first section is written through the eyes of Thomas and the second is from Beulah's perspective. What is fantastic about the way this book is written and organized is that all the poems are connected in sequence and tell a story. Unlike many of the books of poetry that I have read, I did not have to bounce back and forth from this book to my dictionary. Dove's approach to writing poetry is very straight-forward and from the heart. The book reads as if it was a personal memoir from both Thomas and Beulah.

You can relate to the couple and really are drawn in by the imagery and metaphors that Dove uses. Pay attention to the use of wings, salt, fish, canary, feet, heart, music, yellow, flowers, and tears. All contribute in great deal to the depth of each poem. One of my favorite poems from this book is "Courtship, Diligence." In this poem, Beulah is listening to him play the same old mandolin that he has played for years. As she sits she imagines a life where she doesn't have to listen to the same old mandolin and see his same old yellow scarf. Thomas has no idea of her thoughts and is playing as well as he could to make her happy. This really made me think of past relationships and how one person could be very happy and try their best to please the one they love with what they are given. Yet, sometimes no matter how hard one person tries, the other is just simply unhappy. The use of mandolin in this poem is just one example of Dove's imagery. When she is using mandolin, it is representing some feeling or stage in Thomas' life. Whether young and recalling memories, anxious in new love, or old and recovering from a heart attack, the mandolin is an intricate imagery tool. Another fantastic poem is "Variation on Pain." This poem draws back memories of slavery when African Americans were forced to have their ears pierced. The mandolin is again used in this poem, and it draws forth these memories of "two greased strings for each pierced lobe." The third stanza, however, is the most powerful. "There was a needle in his head but nothing fit through it. Sound quivered like a rope stretched clear to land, tensed and brimming, a man gurgling air." This is one of the finest examples of the eloquent power that Rita Dove expresses in her writing.

All in all, this is one of the best written works of poetry that I have come across. It is an easy read and as far as books of poetry go, its progressing story makes Thomas and Beulah a real page turner. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is just getting in to reading poetry or even someone who is a poetry connoisseur.