Collects poems that tell a fictionalized version of the lives of the authors's maternal grandparents.

The Event -- Variation on Pain -- Jiving -- Straw Hat -- Courtship -- Refrain -- Variation on Guilt -- Nothing Down -- The Zeppelin Factory -- Under the Viaduct, 1932 -- Lightnin' Blues -- Compendium -- Definition in the Face of Unnamed Fury -- Aircraft -- Aurora Borealis -- Variation on Gaining a Son -- One Volume Missing -- The Charm -- Gospel -- Roast Possum -- The Stroke -- The Satisfaction Coal Company -- Thomas at the Wheel.

Renowned choral conductor and educator Andr J. Thomas has crafted a book that the conductor of any choral ensemble-be it church, high school, university, or professional-will want close at hand when preparing to program any concert spiritual. Understanding the Spiritual, the first of the book's two sections, includes an exploration of the beginnings of the spiritual, its role in society and its transition into art music. Issues of interpretation-text, diction, rhythm and tempo-are addressed in the second section, Performing the Spiritual. In addition to interviews with noted conductors Dr. Anton Armstrong and Prof. Judith Willoughby as to matters of performance and selection, the centerpiece of this section is Dr. Thomas's personal reflections on several spiritual arrangements, including his rehearsal techniques (with specific examples and measure-number references to the included scores), as well as an insightful look into his decisions of interpretation.

Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award Finalist for the 2017 NAACP Image Award Three decades of powerful lyric poetry from a virtuoso of the English language in one unabridged volume. Rita Dove’s Collected Poems 1974–2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove’s fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America’s kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove’s mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the “precise, singing lines” for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove “has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental” (Poetry magazine).

Here in one volume is a selection of the extraordinary poems of Rita Dove, who, as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, brought poetry into the lives of millions of people. Along with a new introduction and poem, Selected Poems comprises Dove's collections The Yellow House on the Corner, which includes a group of poems devoted to the themes of slavery and freedom; Museum, intimate ruminations on home and the world; and finally, Thomas and Beulah, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, a verse cycle loosely based on her grandparents' lives. Precisely yet intensely felt, resonant with the voices of ordinary people, Rita Dove's Selected Poems is marked by lyric intensity and compassionate storytelling.

Published to coincide with its British premiere at the Royal National Theatre, The Darker Face of the Earth is Rita Dove's first play. Set on a plantation in pre-Civil War South Carolina, it has been performed to great critical acclaim.

A new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate celebrates America's cultural heritage with pieces about such topics as World War I's African-American jazz band, a Harlem girl's examination of adult flirting behaviors, and the first African-American Oscar winner. Reprint.