Award-winning writer Rita Dove boasts an impressive list of achievements. She is the creator of over ten books of poetry and fiction, including Thomas and Beulah which won the Pulitzer Prize when Dove was just thirty-five. She was appointed U.S. poet laureate at forty, not only the youngest ever to hold that position, but also the first African American to do so. In addition, Dove is an educator and television commentator who holds the position of Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Dove has been described as a quiet leader, a poet who does not avoid race issues, but does not make them her central focus. As the poet herself explained in the Washington Post: "Obviously, as a black woman, I am concerned with race. . . . But certainly not every poem of mine mentions the fact of being black. They are poems about humanity, and...