Rita Dove was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. She is currently Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She's won several awards, including the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award and the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Here are two of her poems.

Fox Trot Fridays

Thank the stars there's a day
each week to tuck in

the grief, lift your pearls, and
stride brush stride

quick-quick with a
heel-ball-toe. Smooth

as Nat King Cole's
slow satin smile,

easy as taking
one day at a time:

one man and
one woman,

rib to rib,
with no heartbreak in sight—

just the sweep of Paradise
and the space of a song

to count all the wonders in it.



American Smooth

We were dancing — it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride — such perfect agony
one learns to smile through,
ecstatlc mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn't notice
how still you'd become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?) — achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.