A Study Guide (New Edition) for Rita Dove's "This Life"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide (New Edition) for Rita Dove's "This Life", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781535867986

Book preview

17

This Life

Rita Dove

1980

Introduction

In Rita Dove's poem This Life, first published in her 1980 debut collection, The Yellow House on the Corner, time shifts between the present, the future, and the distant past. The speaker's childhood fascination with a Japanese woodcut becomes the frame through which she understands her relationship with her lover as an adult. A former poet laureate of the United States, Pulitzer Prize winner, and recipient of the National Medal of the Arts as well as the National Humanities Medal, Dove is a prolific and powerful figure in American poetry. Her exemplary technical skill, wide range of subjects, and unique poetic voice combine in verse at once experimental and easy to read, ineffable yet deeply felt. The Yellow House on the Corner introduced Dove's talent through poems remarkable for their depth, perfection, and heart. This Life can also be found in Dove's Selected Poems (1993) and Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (2016).

Author Biography

Rita Frances Dove was born on August 28, 1952, in Akron, Ohio. Raised by supportive parents who encouraged her love of reading, Dove excelled in school. In her senior year of high school she was named a Presidential Scholar, making her one of the nation's top hundred-odd students graduating in 1970. The distinction came with an invitation to the White House. She went on to graduate summa cum laude from Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, in 1973, with a bachelor's degree in English. From there, she studied at the University of Tübingen in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar before returning to the United States to enroll in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She earned her master of fine arts degree in 1977 from the University of Iowa.