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

Abstract

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 per - ception , 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.