They came early and in droves -- college students, young kids, matrons, men in business suits, scholarly-looking types, retired folk. They came to the Library on May 4 to hear Rita Dove, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and poetry ambassador extraordinaire give her final reading as the Poet Laureate of the United States.
Ms. Dove, the youngest poet ever chosen, is only the second woman to hold the title, as well as being the first African American Poet Laureate. The evening marked the end of her second term in the position.
She told her audience: "It's been a wonderful two years. One day I will come sneaking in and clap for the new Poet Laureate."
Poetry readings can be dull. However, Ms. Dove's reading was anything but dull.
When she spoke in her deep, husky voice, her words sprang from the printed page, filled with life and meaning.
Wearing a black top with a full skirt, each fingernail on her hands painted a different color, and colorful hoop earrings that swayed as she moved, Ms. Dove exuded energy and passion.
She announced she would read poems from her newest book, Mother Love (W.W. Norton, $17.95). Mother Love is a modern interpretation (very much Ms. Dove's own) of the Greek myth of Demeter, Persephone and Hades. It is the story of Demeter's anguish at the loss of her daughter, Persephone, who is kidnaped by Hades, king of the underworld, and becomes his consort. According to the myth, the frantic and despairing Demeter spends her time searching in the earth and, overcome by sorrow, neglects her duties as the goddess of agriculture and the harvest. Crops and flowers wither and die, trees lose their leaves; there is no spring or summer, only winter.
Demeter refuses to return to her duties until Zeus promises to make his brother Hades give Persephone back to her mother. Hades agrees, but before Persephone leaves the underworld she eats six pomegranate seeds.
As Ms. Dove relates in the introduction to "Mother Love," "... Anyone who partakes of the food of the dead cannot be wholly restored to the living." Thus it is Persephone's fate to spend half the year as Queen of the Underworld (while her mother mourns fall and winter return) and half the year on earth with her mother (spring and summer).
Ms. Dove uses this basic myth (which she divides into seven parts) as a framework on which to hang her various themes, such as the rippling effects of violence and the fact that a mother cannot change her child's destiny. Ms. Dove also describes the the manner in which a daughter grows away from her mother as she becomes a woman.
For Ms. Dove, the myth becomes a poetic drama expressed in sonnet form. Ms. Dove explained that she chose the 14-line sonnet because traditionally it has been used to tell a love story and because it represents a perfect world in its exactitude.
Before Ms. Dove began reading, she told how the manuscript of "Mother Love" began to take shape years earlier, but had to be delayed, in May 1993, when she was chosen Poet Laureate. She eventually finished the book by the end of her second term.
As an introduction to her version of the Demeter-Persephone myth, the first poem Ms. Dove read was "Heroes," also the first poem in her book. Similar to an operatic overture, "Heroes" is a disturbing poem, filled with foreboding and intimations of death. It set the stage for poems to follow -- during the reading as well as in the book. It relates how a seemingly inconsequential act -- plucking a flower -- can ultimately lead to death and destruction.
The next poem Ms. Dove read, "Persephone Falling," begins the tale. The young girl leaves her friends to pick a narcissus, and, as she does so, is brutally snatched away to another world. In the second stanza, after the deed is done, there is the faint echo of "every" mother, as a worried mother admonishes her child not to talk to strangers and to stay with her friends.
One of Persephone's girlfriends was an eyewitness to the abduction. She could not recover from the experience of hearing her friend scream for help. Ms. Dove's poem, "Statistic: The Witness," describes her pain. In the Greek myth, this girl wanders the earth grieving for her lost companion; finally in Sicily, the gods take pity on her and she is turned into a saltwater stream. In the final stanza, the friend says: "Now I must walk this faithless earth/which cannot readjust an abyss/into flowering meadow./I will walk until I reach/green oblivion... then/I will lie down in kindness,/in the bottomless lull of her arms."
Before proceeding to the next poem, Ms. Dove looked at a young girl seated in the front row, who was probably the same age as her own 12-year-old daughter, Aviva. She spoke of her feelings of loss as her daughter matures.
She also spoke of her daughter's reaction to Mother Love. Once when Ms. Dove was writing these poems, her daughter burst into her workroom, uninvited, as well as unallowed, and said, "You're writing about me!" and stalked out.
Then Ms. Dove read the poem "Mother Love," which details the relationship in its everyday manifestations. "Who can forget the attitude of mothering?/Toss me a baby and without bothering/To blink I'll catch her, sling him on a hip."
"The Bistro Styx" is about a mother who goes to Paris to persuade her daughter to leave her lover and return home. But, as she observes her daughter enter the bistro, deliberately late for their luncheon date, she sees the girl as a young woman who is growing away from her. Although she does not approve of her daughter's new life, the mother must keep silent. She knows that were she to speak her mind, it would mean further separation. The final line sums up her feelings: "I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill."
Ms. Dove concluded her tenure as Poet Laureate by reading a few of her uncollected poems. When she was about to make her last exit, members of the audience gave Ms. Dove a standing, cheering ovation.
