Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate Rita Dove spoke last night about the relationship between lyricism and narrative in poetry, saying that she has approached her work with the view that the two should go hand in hand.
"I grew up feeling that there were no hard-and-fast barriers between narrative and lyric," Dove said in her lecture, titled "Bead and Thread: Aspects of Lyric Narrative in the Poetic Sequence."
Dove discussed the connection between narrative poems, which generally contain a plot or story, and lyrics, non-narrative poems that focus on thought and perception and often lack a logical sequence of events.
"This particular take on what makes a story … comes from a whole childhood of feeling, like that storytelling and poetry were all part of the same thing," Dove said. "A really good storyteller knows how to work language and make it sing."
Dove applied this philosophy to her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Thomas and Beulah" (1986), a collection of poems based on the lives of her maternal grandparents.
"What I was trying to do with ‘Thomas and Beulah' was to make every moment a lyric moment that, when you threaded them together, made a story," she said. "The poems are meant to be self-sustained lyrics, or beads, and when you put them together, you get the story of a marriage."
Most people, Dove said, value the narrative of everyday life above lyric moments, which generally exist outside of time.
"I am interested in this because I find that what we do in everyday life is we keep pushing all of the lyrical away from us so we can get through the narrative of the day," she said.
Narrative and non-narrative poems, she said, are distinct entities yet inherently linked.
"If I had to compare it to prose … prose is like walking through the garden, and a poem is like looking down a well in the garden," she said.
Dove, who teaches poetry at the University of Virginia, read approximately 15 of her poems, many of which are based on historical events.
The reading, hosted by the Center for Humanities at Tufts (CHAT) along with the Africana Center, the Diversity Fund and the Toupin Bolwell Fund, delved into the influence of lyrical forms of poetry on traditional narrative structure.
"Poetry can make us pause at the ordinary and realize the extraordinary lens that a poet brings to the ordinary," Dean of Arts and Sciences Joanne Berger-Sweeney, said in her introduction. "I don't know why poetry speaks to a special place in the soul, but I'm certainly glad it does."
CHAT Director Jonathan Wilson praised Dove's poems as "measured, lyrical, musical and poignant."
"You can't miss her point, and yet the point is beautifully and artfully concealed in layers of myth, image and movement," he said. "Truly, in her case, you cannot tell the dancer from the dance."
Wilson has long had the goal of bringing Dove to speak at Tufts.
"I've been wanting to bring her here for a long time," Wilson told the Daily. "This is an extraordinary honor for us at Tufts."
Department of English Lecturer Mark Gosztyla, who teaches courses on creative writing and poetry, said that Dove's presentation offered valuable insight into the world of poetry.
"I think it was fantastic that Rita was here," Gosztyla said. "It's a great opportunity to learn from this poet laureate. … She is somebody who clearly is fascinated with history and bringing the real world into poetry," he added.
Dove has won a number of achievement awards for her work, including the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 1996 National Humanities Medal.
