{"id":33522,"date":"2013-09-07T22:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T22:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33522"},"modified":"2013-12-05T20:26:44","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T20:26:44","slug":"pulitzer-winning-poet-dove-gives-rall-cultural-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33522","title":{"rendered":"Pulitzer-Winning Poet Dove Gives Rall Cultural Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/nihrecord.od.nih.gov\/newsletters\/2013\/04_12_2013\/story1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Pulitzer-Winning Poet Dove Gives Rall Cultural Lecture<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nihrecord.od.nih.gov\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">nih record<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/nihrecord.od.nih.gov\/newsletters\/2013\/04_12_2013\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Volume LVX, Number 8<\/a> (2013-04-12)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Carla Garnett<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Any \u2018Discovery\u2026a Little Bit of Poetry\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A mixed-race violin prodigy, a self-proclaimed \u201cAfrican prince\u201d and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ludwig_van_Beethoven\" target=\"_blank\">Beethoven<\/a> (yes, the Beethoven). That unlikely trio provides much of the fascinating storyline in poet <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engl.virginia.edu\/people\/rfd4b\" target=\"_blank\">Rita Dove\u2019s<\/a> latest book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=623\" target=\"_blank\">Sonata Mulattica<\/a><\/em>. The Pulitzer-winning former U.S. poet laureate offered <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Institutes_of_Health\" target=\"_blank\">NIH<\/a>\u2019ers tantalizing tidbits from her work on Mar. 13 at the 2013 J. Edward Rall Cultural Lecture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need\u2014all of us\u2014to be pushed out of our comfort zones every once in a while,\u201d said Dove, beginning her talk after having lunch with postdocs and touring the Children\u2019s Inn and a pediatric unit of the Clinical Center. \u201cThat\u2019s why I send my poetry students to science and math\u2014kicking and screaming\u2014and they come back enriched. I think we\u2019re all perpetual students. It\u2019s when our minds are open to something new\u2014and sometimes a little frightening\u2014that the old-and-familiar gets refreshed and energized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018<em>If<\/em> was at the beginning\u2026\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dove\u2019s <em>Sonata Mulattica<\/em>, which tells the \u201cstory of someone who has been forgotten,\u201d is not easily pigeonholed in the literary world. Reviewers, she said, have alternately called the work a poetic sequence (although it has a play in the middle), a verse novel (although all the people and facts in it are true) or a long poem (although the book contains 84 separate poems).<\/p>\n<p>The main character, George Augustus Bridgetower, was born in 1780 to a white Polish mom and a black African dad, a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lothario\" target=\"_blank\">lothario<\/a> who claimed to have royal blood. In early childhood, young Bridgetower\u2019s extraordinary talent as a violinist was discovered (by Austrian composer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joseph_Haydn\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Haydn<\/a>, no less), leading his father to take him on the road for performances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2018<em>If<\/em> was at the beginning,\u2019\u201d said Dove, reading from <em>The Bridgetower<\/em>, the book\u2019s first poem. In that one word, \u201cif,\u201d she seemed to impart all the possibilities of the young phenom\u2019s improbable life. In that one poem she offered all the facts of his life while still leaving the audience hungry for more. Masur Auditorium was silent, spellbound&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/nihrecord.od.nih.gov\/newsletters\/2013\/04_12_2013\/story1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pulitzer-Winning Poet Dove Gives Rall Cultural Lecture nih record Volume LVX, Number 8 (2013-04-12) Carla Garnett Any \u2018Discovery\u2026a Little Bit of Poetry\u2019 A mixed-race violin prodigy, a self-proclaimed \u201cAfrican prince\u201d and Beethoven (yes, the Beethoven). That unlikely trio provides much of the fascinating storyline in poet Rita Dove\u2019s latest book, Sonata Mulattica. The Pulitzer-winning former [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,20],"tags":[15682,15681,15683,134],"class_list":["post-33522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-carla-garnett","tag-george-augustus-bridgetower","tag-nih-record","tag-rita-dove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}