Homeward Dove: Nomadism, “World”-Travelling, and Rita Dove’s "Homecoming(s)"

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article focuses on the question of changing landscapes in Rita Dove’s poetry, and its strict connection with her redefinition of the identity and role of a black poet. A constant movement through various sceneries in terms of space, culture and intellectual concerns is a distinguishing feature of Dove’s poetry. My analysis of her poems sets into motion an interplay of concepts such as: Lugones’s “world”-travelling, Braidotti’s nomadism, Frye’s arrogant perception, Kent's legitimate universal and Ellis's cultural mulatto-ism. The purpose of this strategy is to demonstrate that Dove’s poetry permanently operates between the poles of nomadism and homecoming(s), where the two terms are not perceived as antinomical and mutually exclusive but as dialectical, mutually complementary. As a result, Dove avoids being pigeonholed as either an integrationist or separatist poet, transcending the traditional binary critical categories of classifying American black poets.

Keywords

EN

black(ness); Black Arts Movement; cosmopolitanism; cultural mulatto; homecoming(s); nomadism; universalism; “world”-travelling

• Journal: Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 12-21

Contributors

original work author

Jerzy Kamionowski

Identifiers

DOI

10.15290/cr.2013.03.02