Hades' Pitch

Introduction

In a period when much American poetry is condemned as being merely an exercise in solipsistic navel gazing, and when African American poetry more specifically seems to have lapsed into hibernation after the vigorous activity of the Black Arts movement, Rita Dove steps forth with a body of work that answers such criticism resoundingly. Hers is a poetry characterized by discipline and technical proficiency; surprising breadth of reference, a willingness to approach emotionally charged subjects with aesthetic objectivity, and a refusal to define her only in terms of blackness. She combines a novelist's eye for action and gesture with the ...