Nick Brown | for the Phoenix

Rita Dove speaks at Swarthmore.

BY MEGHAN AUKER-BECKER and MAKI SOMOSOT

In print | Published September 24, 2009 — Updated November 19, 2009 21:26

On Tuesday night, Sept. 22, award-winning poet Rita Dove read favorite poems and selections from her new book, “Sonata Mulattica”, in LPAC Theater. The Phoenix’s Maki Somosot and Meghan Becker were able to chat with the former U.S. Poet Laureate about her poetry and its intersections with music and history before she took the stage.

Maki Somosot: How did you come to the subject of “Sonata Mulattica”? What led you to this story of the life of George Bridgetower?
Rita Dove: My husband and I were watching a video on Beethoven, “Immortal Beloved” … There was a scene in it where Beethoven walks through a room and he walks past musicians tuning up and there’s a black violinist sitting there. After the movie I actually googled “black violinist” and “Beethoven” and got a lead on Bridgetower and was just fascinated by this man … my curiosity led me on and on, and then I realized I really wanted to write about his life.

Meghan Becker: The book focuses on the rediscovery of this lost musician and your poems depict him as a complete figure, a life. What would you want your readers to do with this figure? What would you have us learn from his life?
RD: I want to have people accept him as a complete character and realize there are many different ways of being perceived in this world and that we can be very quick to jump to conclusions … not being perceived as who we really are can happen to all of us in various ways which means we all have something in common. [We need to] think a little more carefully about how we perceive others and how we relate to each other.

MS: How do you think Bridgetower’s story either mirrors or differs from the biracial experience? How does it relate to other marginalized people in society?
RD: What’s interesting about his story was at that time because there weren’t that many mulattoes or Africans in his society … and because of that, he was exotified, which he could play to his advantage or not … There were some people who accepted him for who he was and some who thought of him as something kind of intriguing … It’s slightly different from our situation in our country today because we have reached specific gravities of many marginalized people … and therefore the fear factor begins to rise for the mainstream. I think in a certain way, Barack Obama now being president has brought us to the realization that we have to look at this not in terms of “black and white,” but in all its shades, and to realize that our social relations are complicated.

MB: One of the articles written about your book was titled “What history forgets, poetry remembers.” Do you feel poetry be considered a form of history?
RD: Literature is history with a small “h”, because History with a big “H” has to be general, and it has to give you the trajectory of events. You get the major players, while the rest just kind of fade away or become caricatures. We live our life in detail and from moment to moment, and that’s the stuff we remember, that’s our experience as human beings, so what literature does is to pick up that other level of history, the one we relate to. That’s the intimacy of how we really live.

MB: You refuse to be bound by history, gender, race, circumstance, etc. You write in a “universal” and “detached” voice. Where does that come from? Was that something you had to work for, or is this a matter of character?
RD: It’s a natural part but it also comes from how I lived my life … My school experience was so different from a lot of people’s in that the school was about 30 percent black and 70 percent white, but we all got along … we were at that edge, at that fulcrum where fear still hadn’t entered into the factor. I had a Fulbright to Germany, which gave me a sense that the world is a lot smaller than I imagined … I really do firmly believe we are more alike than we are different, and that makes us universal.

MS: What has it been like to collaborate with different artists in different art forms and how does this influence your writing?
RD: I find it immensely exciting to work with other artists in different disciplines because you spark off of each other. It stretched my poetry… at one point, it even made me think more about how words sound in the air. It makes you think and push just a little bit harder.

MS: Are there musical artists you enjoy listening to?
RD: I began taking voice lessons [several] years ago, and I thought, my voice is portable — I can carry that sucker with me wherever I go! I’ve been singing and listening to a lot of opera — Puccini, Verdi. But I also love jazz — Keith Jarrett and Leonard Cohen as a songwriter. And then a few interesting rappers, there’s one called Graydon Square. He’s an atheist rapper and his lyrics are amazing, incredible, really smart and rhythmic.

MB: You have won numerous awards and honors over the years; what effects do you feel these have on your writing and how do they affect your sense of responsibility as a writer?
RD: I don’t think it’s changed my sense of responsibility. But like many writers I’m a very shy and introspective person. It makes me more aware that if I say something, it might be printed, and I’m aware of the fact that it might go further. But on the other hand I’ve always believed one should always behave as if what you say might be overheard and you have to be responsible for what you do … The most difficult part about it is finding the private time to be honest with myself when I write and not to think about what anyone else might think but to say. I must write what I feel and believe and then it is only afterward when I can decide whether I’m going to publish it or not. But it’s at that initial point when the audience has to disappear.

MS: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers or poets?
RD: You have to live life, live it intensely. If people don’t get your writing, it’s not because anything is wrong with you, it’s because the writing just isn’t technically ready yet. Keep trying, keep writing, and keep having faith in yourself.

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