Reading Road Trip 2020Current location: Ohioride joy untilit cracks like an egg,make sorrow seethe and whisperWhen my son started college, he was dating the same girl he'd been dating since his sophomore year of high school.This raised the eyebrows of our more conservative family members and at a summer gathering before his first semester of college, one of the most old school of them all declared (with a big lipsticked smile), “Well, he's been dating her long enough by now, shouldn't we be hear...

To start off, I like the way this book feels in my hands. The cover is a pleasing texture and the thin paperback poetry books are always flexible and light on the hands. I appreciate that this book is based in Akron, Ohio. Can't say that about many of the Pulitzer-prize winners! This is not my favorite collection of poetry, nor does it contain any of my favorite poems. However, there is something endearing and very normal about the poetry topics. The fact that the normal stories of Akronites are...

About 3/4 of this book described moments from the lives of Thomas and Beulah in beautiful, symbolic verse. The other 1/4 was a little beyond me. I might get more out of it if I had done more college-level work in reading poetry. Some of my favorites include "The Event" and "One Volume Missing."

I really enjoyed this wonderful view of the history of the Akron area. The poems about constructing gigantic zeppelins were especially intriguing.

Shoot. Jeannine told me I should read this, given the current trajectory of my thesis, and she wasn't wrong. These poems are elegant imaginings of Dove's family history rendered in such an understated way. Offering the two halves of the story of Thomas and Beulah, the book paints such a stark picture of Depression-era and WWII family life. I'm going to have to work my way back through this again.

I'm going to dock a star for the time being because I'm legitimately baffled as to why this ended with "The Oriental Ballerina". This was really great—I read it twice back to back—but the purpose of "The Oriental Ballerina" continues to elude me. Especially as a closing number. But so many moments of stunning, quiet beauty that I'll probably up this to a full 5 eventually

This was deliciously well-done; Dove is witty and touching and lyrically adept. I found the two halves so brilliantly complementary that I couldn't easily say that I preferred one to the other; in both, she dissects disappointment so skillfully, so lovingly.* It's striking how artfully she constructs the two figures as mirrored, both pigeonholed into the roles society has fashioned for them--Thomas haunted by the loss of his first love (platonic or otherwise) and Beulah struggling against the re...

(Read in the collection Selected Poems.)

What a beautiful story about a man and woman, told in both voices, who marry in Akron, Ohio 1920's. This book follows the black migration northward and ends up in my own area. But this is a time period and culture so unlike mine. I had trouble understanding some of the poems, although I highly appreciate Dove's imagery and lyrical quality. It is helpful to read the timeline at the end of the book and then re-read the poems.

No one can help him anymore.Not the young thing next doorin the red pedal pushers,not the canary he drove distractedwith his mandolin. There’ll beno more trees to wake him in moonlight,nor a single dry spring morningwhen the fish are lonely for company.She’s standing there telling him: give it up.She is weary of sirens and his faceworn with salt. If this is code,she tells him, listen: we were good,though we never believed it.And now he can’t even touch her feet.—"Company"

Rita Dove's haunting and beautiful book Thomas and Beulah won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and I can see why. These very layered, very distant, yet somehow extremely emotional poems trace the life of Thomas and Beulah, the two characters who are loosely based on Rita Dove's grandparents. I would like to get to know them better, so I will be reading this one again someday.

I enjoy Rita Dove’s poetry but tend to come away from her work feeling as if she has exposed a deficiency in my poetry reading skill because I don’t absolutely love her work. This feeling has intensified after attending her delightful reading at OSU earlier this year and after reading this collection, which won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Once again, I enjoyed this collection, but did not absolutely love it (pitiful, I know). That said, I think these two poems from this collection are es...

This is not my first reading and it won't be my last. Thomas and Beulah is a great love letter from the poet to her grandparents, and whether or not the stories contained are exact they provide the kind of truth that only a poet can give.Splitting the collection into two strong Points of View, shows art dealing with opposites, male/female, light/dark, black/white -- the poems start in a place that feel deeply personal. But the great poems that start with the personal, by being specific touch on

Rita Dove tells her grandparents' story through poetry.

I read this book in about two hours and immediately turned back to the first page and started reading again, slower this time, so I could savor the imagery and beauty in the simplistic details. This is the far superior precursor to the modern novel in verse. It is a story woven by poetry rather than a story forced into poetic form. No wonder it won the Pulitzer.

Many like this book of poems loosely about lives of maternal grandparents.Gabrielle Foreman in 'Miss Puppet Lady', WRB March 1993 review of novel of childhood 'Through the Ivory Gate ' is not positive about this book, tho I would probably find it interesting to read. It seems from Wikipedia that she has not written any more novels, but plenty of poetry, plays etc.

I probably shouldn’t admit to it: I do believe this is the first time I ever enjoyed poetry. No harp played. No angels sang. But as I was reading, flowers kept blooming inside me, so furtive and beautiful the images were. I loved this elusive, intimate flash of a book.As close to prose as I could ever hope for, casting flourishes light as air, the book grabbed my full attention with its genuine people at the forefront, the dusty afternoon sunshine of their couple’s story and the muddy truths tha...

3.5 starsThis is a very good collection of poetry. A two part narrative, one detailing the life of Thomas and the other of Beulah's. Their lives together, their shared moments exposed in different perspectives, the more personal, contemplative moments between the narrator and the reader. However, and this is entirely my fault, I didn't love it because I don't enjoy poetry. I find it difficult to connect to and leave feeling cold or touched by a few lines at best. I read the collection on its own...

I do not feel equipped to critique poetry. This was beautiful though, like the shine in your morning coffee

Read this in quite a short amount of time but I think that was for the best since like Montage of a Dream Deferred the flow of the poems was really important and there were themes and motifs running through it, not to mention a really fantastic narrative too.This collection is about Rita Dove's grandparents, and its split into two parts to focus on both of them. Part One, Mandolin, focuses on Thomas, beginning with a scene depicting the death of his friend Lem that he witnessed when he swam towa...