Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952, at a time when racial barriers were being torn down. Her father was the first African American chemist to be hired by the Goodyear Tire Corporation. She graduated summa cum laude from Miami (Ohio) University and won a Fulbright Scholarship.

In addition to her many collections of poems, Dove’s published work also includes a verse drama, The Darker Face of the Earth (1994); a collection of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985); and a novel, Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Thomas and Beulah (1986) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dove is the only African American to be named poet laureate of the United States, a title she held from 1993 to 1995.

Rosa

“Rosa” was first published in Georgia Review in 1998 and then in Dove’s collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks in 1999. The Rosa of the title refers to Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement. In December 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Her arrest sparked the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, considered one of the turning points of the fight for civil rights.

How she sat there,

the time right inside a place

so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with

5

its dream of a bench

to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:

the clean flame of her gaze

carved by a camera flash.

10

How she stood up

when they bent down to retrieve

her purse. That courtesy.

(1998)