Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades.

I mentioned a few days ago that we have not spent enough time focusing on Poet Laureates. The current U.S. Poet Laureate is Joy Harjo. Article # 16 focused on Ted Kooser. Today we’re going to focus on Rita Dove, who was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. By the way. Prior to 1986, we just referred to them as Consultants in Poetry. Why? I don’t know. SInce you’ve probably all heard of Amanda Gorman by now, unless you are living in a cave in the desert, you’re also probably aware that we now have a position called National Youth Poet Laureate. Amanda Gorman was the first of those, chosen in 2017.

While Poet Laureate sounds like an impressive title, it only comes with a stipend of $35,000, which only works out to a little over $16 an hour before taxes. That means that even the Poet Laureate better have a day job.

Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio. Her father was a chemist. She was a brilliant student, and studied in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. She was only forty years old when she was named Poet Laureate - the youngest in American history. In addition to authoring eleven books of poetry, she is an essayist, editor, activist, novelist, and playwright, and, paired with her husband, an avid ballroom dancer. Her awards are too many to list. There are extensive collections of her poems online at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rita-dove) and at poets.org (https://poets.org/poet/rita-dove#poet__works)

I will say that, in general, Dove’s poetry is very readable, in Ted Kooser’s phrasing, very accessible. More than any other Poet Laureate before her,  she saw it as her mission to expand the role, as a teacher and essentially an evangelist of the art. She made an effort to be very accessible.

Today’s poem, Dusting (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35004/dusting), has a simple premise, and an elegantly simple, well-matched metaphor. It starts out:

Every day a wilderness—no

shade in sight. Beulah

patient among knicknacks,

the solarium a rage

of light, a grainstorm

as her gray cloth brings

dark wood to life.

The speaker is watching Beaulah dusting around all of the things, and polishing the wooden furniture in a sunroom, a “solarium.” It may be bright and sunny, a “rage of light” but her gray cloth (like a gray rain cloud) produces a “grainstorm” bringing the hidden details in the dark wood to light.

(You can find the full text of the article at The Other Pages onFacebook or Tumblr)