Grace Notes by Rita Dove

First published: 1989

The Work

In Grace Notes, Rita Dove explores the implications of being an African American who is prepared to step forward into a world broader than any limiting labels would suggest. Many poems focus on the relationship between her biracial child and herself, revealing how the child discovers and accepts these differences. Others show the daughter learning what it means to become a woman. Still other poems question the effect that the development of identity can have on the artist.

Dove sets the stage with the first poem, “Summit Beach, 1921,” which examines the risk of being at the edge of development. A girl watches her friends dance as she rests her broken leg. She had climbed to the top of her father’s shed, then stepped off. Dove shows that the girl wants to date but that her father had discouraged her. This poem suggests that the search for identity does not occur without risks because the search involves making choices.

Married to a German, Dove’s daughter learns to belong in both worlds. “Genetic Expedition” contains images which delve into the physical differences between the black mother and her biracial child. Beginning with images of her own body, Dove mentions that she resembles pictures of natives in the National Geographic more than she does her own daughter. Because of the National Geographic’s sensual, naked women, her father had not allowed the children to read the magazine. While Dove identifies physically with the bodies of these women, she acknowledges that her daughter’s features and hair reflect her biracial heritage. Thus the poem exemplifies Dove’s rootedness in her own culture while being open to other cultures.

Other poems that feature Dove’s daughter show the child as she discovers her mother’s body, the source of her life and future. “After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed” describes a tender moment between mother and daughter as the daughter compares her budding body with her mother’s mature body. Dove emphasizes the daughter’s innocent curiosity and her delight at realizing what her future holds.

Several poems discuss artists searching for ways to express who they have come to be through their art. “Canary” looks at the difficulty of such inquiry. Focusing on Billie Holiday, the poem describes the downward spiral of her life. Whether it was more difficult for her to be black or to be female is the question of identity that Dove explores, suggesting that circumstances conspired to take away Holiday’s power to carve out her own identity. Dove’s poems allow the questions and implications of a search for identity to take shape as an ongoing process.

Bibliography

Baker, Houston, Jr. Review of Grace Notes. Black American Literature Forum 24 (Fall, 1990): 574-577. A major African American critic and scholar addresses the question of Dove’s relation to African American womanist traditions, finding the key in Dove’s autobiographical lyricism and her astute precision in naming. She makes, says Baker, a cosmopolitan and common story out of everyday lives.

Booklist. LXXXVI, September 15, 1989, p.137. A review of Grace Notes.

Costello, Bonnie. “Scars and Wings: Rita Dove’s Grace Notes.” Callaloo 14 (Spring, 1991): 434-438. In what must rank among the most perceptive articles on Grace Notes, Costello affirms the descriptive precision, tonal control, and metaphoric reach within uncompromising realism that are among its most impressive features. Many of the poems offer ways of coping with and transcending wounds, but Dove is also willing to remind readers that their vulnerabilities are real and often untranscendable.

Kitchen, Judith. “A Want Ad.” Georgia Review 44 (Spring, 1990): 256-271. Admitting to feeling troubled by much of the women’s poetry written by Dove’s contemporaries, Kitchen praises Dove because, although she clearly cares about the issues that arise from being black and from being a woman, she does not assume that dealing with these issues makes her a poet. She resists ideology, preferring the inquisitive mind that discovers meaning. A provocative discussion of the book and of its cultural context.

Library Journal. CXIV, December, 1989, p.128. A review of Grace Notes.

McDowell, Robert. “The Assembling Vision of Rita Dove.” In Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry, edited by James McCorkle. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. Although written before the publication of Grace Notes, this discussion illuminates that book as well as Dove’s earlier work, as McDowell explores Dove’s synthesis of striking imagery, myth, magic, fable, wit, humor, political comment, and knowledge of history. An eloquent tribute from one poet to another.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVI, July 28, 1989, p.212. A review of Grace Notes.

Vendler, Helen. “Blackness and Beyond Blackness: New Icons of the Beautiful in the Poetry of Rita Dove.” Times Literary Supplement, February 18, 1994, 11-13. A critical survey of Dove’s career by one of the most important critics of modern and contemporary American poetry. Vendler finds Grace Notes governed by Dove’s discovery, as an African American poet, that blackness need not be her central subject but equally need not be omitted. The essay offers insights into a number of aspects of Dove’s work.