American Smooth by Rita Dove is a wonderful book of poetry. The book was published in 2004 and is her first book of poetry since 2000. The only other book I have read of Dove’s is Selected Poems published in 1993. I didn’t like it much at all. What got me to read American Smooth was the discovery that Dove and her husband enjoy ballroom dancing.

The title of the book comes from a style of dancing, American smooth, which includes a large amount of open work with the partners apart and not in the traditional dance hold. Think Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The dances include waltz, foxtrot, and tango. There are several poems in the book about dancing but my favorite one with a dance theme is “Bolero” which is a Latin dance. It captures the slow erotic feeling of the dance wonderfully. The beat of the dance, in case you aren’t familiar with it, is a long slow followed by a quick, quick. It’s a rumba beat only slower. Here’s a sample:

Not the ratcheting crescendo of Ravel’s bright winds
but an older,
crueler

passion: a woman with hips who knows when to move them,
who holds nothing back
but the hurt

she takes with her as she dips, grinds, then rises sweetly into
his arms again.
Not

delicate. Not tame. Bessie Smith in a dream of younger,
(Can’t you see?)
slimmer

days. Restrained in the way a debutante is not, the way a bride
pretends she
understands.

The book isn’t all dancing, however. There is a powerful series of poems called “Twelve Chairs” which contains a poem for each member of a jury plus an alternate juror. As a sample we have a poem of the Fourth Juror

Cancel the afternoon
evenings mornings all
the days to come
until the fires
fall to ash
the fog clears
and we can see
where we
really
stand.

follwed by the poem of the Fifth Juror

How long will
this take?
I am not my
brother,
thank you;
my hands are
full already
taking care
of
myself.

There are poems you read that are purely intellectual and stay in the head. Then there are poems that you feel in your stomach. The poems in American Smooth are poems that you feel in your stomach. Some of them brought tears to my eyes, some made me nod, some took my breath away. I am done thinking that I don’t like Rita dove. This book has made me a convert.

For more information about Rita Dove including some interviews and video of her and her husband dancing, visit her website