American Smooth: Poems

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling Collection
Review: Dove's keen, deliberate voice in "American Smooth" is as brilliant as ever. In each poem, the gut-true, but never easy, illuminations of individual subject become gorgeous music. Dove masterfully evokes specific moments of joy and disappointment, beauty and carelessness, honor and neglect. The title, "American Smooth" refers, in part, to a form of ballroom dancing. These poems are just as lean and graceful and sophisticated as any great dancer's best moves. I want to go everywhere Rita Dove's work leads, because when I come back, I'm never quite the same.

Rating:
Summary: The Sweetest Word
Review: Rita Dove is a highly acclaimed poet and a former Poet Laureate of the United States with many accolades and honors. Her latest publication, AMERICAN SMOOTH, is a collection of forty-four poems infused with the history of World War I, the enjoyment of dancing, and issues of everyday life.

My favorite selections are "Meditation at Fifty Yards, Moving Target", which makes shooting a gun sound so poetic and "Heart to Heart" which downplays the myths one associates with the heart (shape and color), and all the cliches individuals use in terms of it (from the bottom of my heart), and breaks down what it really is (muscle) and what people need to keep it going (love).

Although I was not able to enjoy the collection in it's entirety, I enjoyed several of the poetic offerings similar to those mentioned above. Those that I did not identify with were well written, its just that I was not able to relate to those pieces, but that is the beauty of poetry, there is something for everyone.

Reviewed by Aiesha Flowers
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers