Rita Dove

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a poet. In the town where she comes from, people glow with pride when they hear her name mentioned. She's the first African American to become the Poet Laureate of the United States. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the Clintons are among those who've listened with pleasure to her work. She comes from a family which, to use her phrase, had struggled to achieve middle class status, and she seemed destined to become a lawyer or a doctor. Instead, she writes about her family and her roots in a style that's both polished and musical. You can't be a writer unless you get involved, she says. How can you render the world unless you're involved with it? Currently the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, she is Rita Dove. So you don't seal yourself off from the world to write, then, Rita, or do you just specifically to do the business of writing?

Rita Dove1:22

For the business of writing I will seal myself off momentarily, but I can't imagine cutting myself off from the world and writing about it at the same time.

Presenter1:31

But on the other hand, you write a lot about your memories from memory, as it were. Memories of your childhood, it seems to me, of your relatives talking to you, telling you stories.

Rita Dove1:39

Is

Speaker 41:40

Mm-hmm.

Rita Dove1:40

Because in my family, in my larger family, let's say, part of living is to also acknowledge the past and to know where you came from. And my great aunts and great uncles, my grandparents, all of that extended family, it was a tradition that the older people would tell you stories from the past. And as a younger person you listened and you learned from them. But did they did they tell them well? They told them well. They told them in a way that even if you had heard it before, it seemed like it was entirely new. They were told with

Presenter2:03

Uh

Rita Dove2:13

A bit of irony, a little stretch of a word at at a place, very musically actually. And it would start with gossip, sort of like who wore this hat to church and my God, what's terrible we haven't seen her in church in years, that kind of stuff. And then it would kind of segue into memories about some errant member of the family, you know, who had done something horribly risky, but interesting. And the memories would start to to bubble out.

Presenter2:41

But but were you aware of the words they were using? Did you care about the words? Were they the right words? Did you feel they fitted?

Rita Dove2:49

They fit.

Rita Dove2:50

Because sometimes a story I had heard before, but every time it was new, and it was new because they gauged the tenor of the room and they used words which just they were juicy, let's put it, the words were juicy, and uh they knew exactly when the pause, the silences were also juicy. Uh so it was as much the story being told as the entire cadence of the story as it as it came out.

Presenter3:17

We should hear a little bit of your poetry just to get a a feel of it, because I know that obviously from what you've said already, generations fascinate you, and you've written um a collection of poems called Mother Love, now being a mother yourself of a daughter and you being the daughter of your mother and so on.

Presenter3:31

Would you read the first stanza of of the poem that gave its name to the book, Mother Love? I'd be happy to.

Rita Dove3:39

Who can forget the attitude of mothering?

Rita Dove3:42

Toss me a baby, and without bothering To blink I'll catch her, sling him on a hip.

Rita Dove3:49

Any woman knows the remedy for grief is being needed.

Rita Dove3:54

Duty bugles and we'll climb Out of exhaustion every time, Bare the nipple or tuck in the sheet, Heat milk and hum at bedside until they can dress themselves and rise, Primed for love or glory, Those one way mirrors girls peer into As their fledgling heroes slip through, Storming the smoky battlefield.

Rita Dove4:20

Tell me about your first record.

Rita Dove4:22

This first uh piece is one that I play.

Rita Dove4:26

almost always to get myself into the mood for writing, for sealing myself off momentarily from the world in order to write about it. It's Keith Jarrett's the opening from Keith Jarrett's Kern concert. Um it's the concert that he did in Cologne in nineteen seventy five.

Presenter5:38

The opening of Keith Jarrett's Cologne concert that was recorded live at the Opera in Cologne in nineteen seventy five.

Presenter5:45

Rita Dove, as as US poet laureate, which you were between'ninety three and'ninety five, you followed in the footsteps of such people as Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost, and, interestingly for us, Stephen Spender. What does the title mean in the States? What was required of you?

Rita Dove6:01

One thing that wasn't required of me was to write poems for affairs of state. So uh uh luckily I did not have to write poems to The Clinton's Cat.

Presenter6:10

Ponies to order, which must be very difficult.

Rita Dove6:12

It's very difficult and I think ultimately doesn't yield the very highest level of poems. But what is required of the U. S. Poet Laureate is basically to plan a reading series, but also to consult with the Librarian of Congress on

Rita Dove6:28

The contemporary literature holdings and on the live recordings of contemporary poets.

Speaker 46:34

Uh

Rita Dove6:34

Yeah.

Speaker 46:34

Hmm.

Rita Dove6:34

And then comes that vague requirement, which is to promote literature as he or she sees fit. And each laureate interprets that in a different way. I was one of the youngest poet laureates appointed

Rita Dove6:50

And so I took that as a kind of a a a mission to energize the position.

Rita Dove6:57

And I always believed that

Rita Dove7:00

Poetry was an intensely personal and intimate experience.

Rita Dove7:05

that uh has in a certain way been spoiled by

Rita Dove7:10

teaching it, you know, and requiring students to come up with an interpretation and then saying, no, that's wrong. And so my idea was to bring poetry back into the to the living rooms. But how are you going to do that?

Speaker 47:21

Uh

Speaker 17:21

But how did you do that?

Rita Dove7:23

By doing lots of media, by going on television, by going on Sesame Street, so you get them while they're young, by speaking to

Rita Dove7:34

Grade school children and going to even the naval academy'cause I thought they need poetry too. And did you get

Presenter7:39

And did you get a reaction? Did you have an effect?

Rita Dove7:41

Yes, the letters just kept pouring in. I would get letters from people who would write in and would tell me they usually began their letters by saying, well, I don't know much about poetry or I'm not very good at poetry, but and then they would tell the story about how they first read a poem that moved them and great ideas about how you could encourage poetry in the schools. And these were from people who had nothing to do, let's say, professionally with literature.

Presenter8:07

So why do you think they were so wary of it? Why had they been so frighten why are we so frightened of poetry?

Presenter8:13

Yeah.

Rita Dove8:13

I do believe that something that moves us very deeply renders us speechless. And the curious uh the paradox about poetry is that it uses words to take words away from you. It takes your breath away, if it's wonderful. So if that happens with music, when we hear music, we can be speechless and no one will ask you what that music meant or how you felt. They will let you be silent. With poetry, with literature, the temptation is to then talk about it.

Rita Dove8:43

And I think it happens a lot of times, at least in the States, in the schools, where um you read a poem or you read a story or something that moves you deeply, and then you immediately have to write about it, and you can't.

Rita Dove8:56

Tell me about record number two.

Rita Dove9:00

Marion Williams.

Rita Dove9:02

is a

Rita Dove9:03

Gospel Singer

Rita Dove9:05

From the old school. This reminds me of.

Rita Dove9:10

growing up in the um African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Akron, Ohio, where I would see these older women

Rita Dove9:20

get up moved by the music.

Rita Dove9:23

They came into the church kind of bent over and tired, and suddenly they were light as feathers because they were lifted up not only by the music but the entire community in this incredible um fervor. They were strong again.

Speaker 49:41

Come on.

Rita Dove9:43

I'm ready to go.

Rita Dove9:46

It's time again.

Rita Dove9:48

Where did you go?

Rita Dove9:50

Strong again, I'm ready to go.

Rita Dove9:55

You can't stop me, I'm ready to go.

Rita Dove9:59

Strong game, come back.

Rita Dove10:03

Don't give child.

Presenter10:08

Marion Williams singing Strong Again and the kind of music you heard, Rita Dove, in in the church, in the Methodist church uh as a child. A lot of audience participation, yes, people calling out

Rita Dove10:17

Absolutely, absolutely. There was no church service where you just sat very still and received the word, so to speak. In a song like that, the rest of the congregation would have piped in, would have said, you know, yes, sing it and go ahead, honey, and all that. During the sermons, the minister would preach and you would help him along or say, oh, don't go there.

Presenter10:38

But do you like that in audiences still? I know it happened when your play, A Darker Face of the Earth, was performed in A Black Neighbourhood. People started to call out during the play.

Rita Dove10:46

When it was performed before a black audience, there were places where people would say, Oh, honey, you don't all know. Don't you know who that is? And it was wonderful because they were used to, this audience was used to that kind of call and response, the idea that nothing exists in the vacuum, but if you're asked to view it, you also have a right to participate in it. And I grew up with that, and I was actually very thrilled. The performers were momentarily shaken, but then they kind of said, Oh, yes, remember this.

Presenter11:20

It's playing it at the National Theatre in London at the moment, but I don't think you're going to get an English audience quite a bit.

Rita Dove11:20

It's playing

Rita Dove11:24

I don't believe so.

Presenter11:26

But it is let's talk about it for a second because it's um it's called, as I say, Darker Face of the Earth, and it's based on the uh Sophocles Oedipus Rex legend. But again, you of course, therefore, the Greek chorus is there, and in a sense that Greek chorus is reacting in that kind of way, isn't it? It's the same kind of thing as audience participation.

Rita Dove11:41

Yeah.

Rita Dove11:44

It is. And it was one of the the keys that that actually inspired me to write the play because so it's based on Oedipus Rex. It's set on a slave plantation. And the slaves become the Greek chorus in that tradition of call and response, the notion that the community has the right to not only see everything but to comment on the action. And when I hit upon that mix, because I was looking for

Rita Dove12:09

an analogous situation to a an airtight world where there were gods whose every whimsy became law, and a chorus which saw all, but could not really change it, but could comment on it. It was just perfect.

Presenter12:23

So there's an echo of your childhood there.

Rita Dove12:25

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

Tell me about your father. I said in the beginning that your father and mother became middle class. By the sound of it, your father was was quite a pioneer,'cause he was the first black man to be employed above shop level in his organization, wasn't he?

Rita Dove12:38

Yes, he was. My father is a chemist. Um he's retired now. Um but he was the smartest in his family uh and he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class, though he was not allowed to give the valedictorian address because he was black.

Speaker 412:58

Hmm.

Rita Dove12:58

Um the the industry at Akron, Ohio was rubber, and his good year Tyron Rubber Company was one of the premier companies there. He was hired as an elevator operator, and his classmates, some of whom he had tutored in chemistry, organic chemistry particularly, were hired as chemists. So he

Rita Dove13:18

I ferried them up and down the elevator for a couple of years.

Rita Dove13:22

Because he had to. He had a family. I was on the way. My brother was already there.

Rita Dove13:27

And, um

Rita Dove13:29

Finally, to their credit, his some of his former classmates and his former chemistry professor

Rita Dove13:36

kept badgering the administration and saying you're wasting this young man's talents, and they finally decided to risk hiring a black chemist, so he was a pioneer.

Rita Dove13:48

Um, I didn't know about it until I was in college. He didn't tell me. He didn't tell any of us until we were in college.

Speaker 413:54

And

Rita Dove13:54

And so I grew up feeling that if I did my absolute best, then eventually.

Rita Dove14:02

I would.

Rita Dove14:04

achieve what I dreamed of. I think if I had known

Rita Dove14:08

that my father had done his absolute best in

Rita Dove14:11

operated an elevator for two years, then I would have become bitter too early, and that's why he didn't tell us.

Rita Dove14:17

Tommy Bice That record

Rita Dove14:20

The third record.

Rita Dove14:21

Is From the Bach Unaccompanied Sweets for Cello, it's number three, the Serre Band.

Rita Dove14:28

I played the cello from the time I was ten, and the Bach unaccompanied suites for cello are really the the pinnacle.

Rita Dove14:36

the end-all and be all for a cellist because it's simply a cello and no other instrument and yet harmony, rhythm,

Rita Dove14:45

and the melody are all contained in the music.

Presenter15:46

Yo Yo Ma playing part of the Saraband from Bach's Unaccompanied Sweets for Cello, No. three. Rita, tell me about books in your childhood,'cause there's mention in a couple of your poems of a set of books, encyclopedias perhaps, that fit perfectly d into a bookcase. D did they exist? Do they exist?

Rita Dove16:02

They do exist. Uh there was a room in our house which was lined with books. There were there was an entire wall of books and uh

Rita Dove16:11

It was gosh, it was like a treasure chest to go in there and just pick any book off the shelves. And there was also a

Rita Dove16:20

A smaller bookcase which contained

Rita Dove16:23

what were called the great books of the Western world.

Rita Dove16:26

Like fifty-five volumes, color-coded, very all matching with I think red bindings for philosophy and blue for literature and green for scientific things. And you had Isaac Newton there and the Iliad and Shakespeare and and I remember looking at this and thinking if I could just read all these books I'd have all the wisdom of the Western world.

Presenter16:46

And did you try to do that?

Rita Dove16:47

I did try. I tried with the Iliad very young and, you know, could only remember the rosy fingers of Dawn, but eventually, you know, did read it. That's where I first began reading Shakespeare, because it was there and I was about 10 or 11 when I began reading Shakespeare, without knowing that he was supposed to be difficult.

Presenter17:08

There's another poem about your your local library, Maple Valley Branch Library, nineteen sixty seven, you've called it. So you'd have been, what, fifteen? I would have been above fifteen, yes. And it certainly shows what an eclectic appetite you had for for books. G give us a snippet of that, if you will.

Rita Dove17:14

It would have been about 15, yes.

Rita Dove17:22

Certainly.

Rita Dove17:24

So I read Gone with the Wind because it was big, and Haiku because they were small.

Rita Dove17:31

I studied history for its rhapsody of dates, lingered over cubist art for the way it showed all sides of a guitar at once. All the time in the world was there, and sometimes all the world on a single page. As much as I could hold on my plastic card's imprint I took, greedily, six books, six volumes of bliss, the stuff we humans are made of words and sighs and silence, ink and whips, brahma and cosine, corsets and poetry and blood sugar levels, I carried it home past five blocks of aluminum siding and the old garage where, on its boarded up doors, some one had scrawled.

Rita Dove18:23

I can eat an elephant if I take small bites.

Rita Dove18:27

Yes, I said, to no one in particular. That's what I'm gonna do.

Rita Dove18:33

Next record.

Rita Dove18:37

The next record is a piece from the soundtrack of the film Toules Metin de Mont.

Rita Dove18:44

I chose it because after years of playing the cello I switched to the viola da gamba, which is an early instrument, and

Rita Dove18:54

The sound of all these early instruments, which you'll hear, it's a slightly reedier sound than you're used to hearing in classical music.

Rita Dove19:01

And it it's full of longing to me. It's full of longing and at the same time an an incredible precision.

Presenter19:56

Part of the soundtrack of the film Toules Matin du Monde in that piece was composed by Marin Marais.

Presenter20:03

So, Rita Dove, you wrote as a child in Ohio, you wrote a neighbourhood newspaper with your brother, you wrote and performed plays for your parents. Do you remember the first poem you wrote and how old you were?

Rita Dove20:14

I do. Uh the first poem that took me over that I was very proud of I wrote when I was about ten, and it was a poem for Easter called The Rabbit with the Droopy Ear. And I remember it because

Rita Dove20:26

It when I began it, I didn't know how I was going to solve the dilemma of this poor rabbit with one droopy ear who wanted so much to have straight ears. So I kept writing and the answer came out of the pole.

Presenter20:39

But you were obviously incredibly bright. You were good at maths and physics and and other things as well as English at school, and you were, as I said at the beginning, destined to be a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer,'cause that's what your parents would have loved for you, isn't it?

Rita Dove20:51

That's what my parents would have loved. That's what the community would have loved. It's a kind of a thing, I think, in any immigrant or minority community that you you lift the level of the community as well. And if you were bright, it was just assumed you were going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher. So though no one said it to my face that that's what I was going to be, I went off to the university convinced I was going to be a lawyer until I discovered that I hated law, you know, and I wasn't good at it.

Presenter21:21

But what happened when you told them? You said, Excuse me, I'm going to be a writer.

Rita Dove21:25

Perhaps worse, I'm going to be A poet, the worst thing you can possibly say to scientifically minded parents.

Rita Dove21:33

It was remarkable. I told my mother first

Rita Dove21:36

who said, Well, you should tell your father yourself, and he simply put down his newspaper, swallowed,

Rita Dove21:42

and said, Well,

Rita Dove21:44

I've never been good at understanding poems, so I hope you won't be upset if I don't read them.

Rita Dove21:52

And I said, That's fine. It was in a certain way he gave me the freedom to g the license, let's say, to to go off and do it. And so I always felt that though

Rita Dove22:02

They didn't quite understand how this poet emerged in the midst of mathematicians and scientists. They were willing to to believe in me and and and see what happened.

Presenter22:14

And how did they react when you finally became poet laureate, for heaven's sake?

Rita Dove22:18

It was it was it was wonderful. It was wonderful to see how proud they were and the surprise. Uh I think that the first big surprise happened when I got the Pulitzer and I called my parents and I told them

Speaker 122:26

Mm.

Rita Dove22:34

And it was one of the few times I heard my father actually gasp.

Rita Dove22:38

Uh he's a very cool character and he kinda went, What? and his voice went up several, you know, octaves and and I realized that I had made them proud and it was it was a wonderful moment.

Rita Dove22:49

Record number five.

Rita Dove22:53

Billie Holliday was someone who often played on the record player at home.

Rita Dove22:59

She has always been an icon for me and uh

Rita Dove23:04

everything, the way she presented her songs and that the grace with which she did it, the dignity in which she talked about the indignities, or sang about the indignities of um

Rita Dove23:16

of segregation and discrimination. And I'll introduce this song with with a few lines from a poem that I've written about Billie Holliday that's called Canary.

Rita Dove23:27

Billy Holliday's burned voice had as many shadows as lights a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano, the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

Speaker 423:41

Southern Tree

Speaker 423:44

Bear a strange fruit.

Speaker 423:49

Blood on the leaf

Speaker 423:52

And blood at the root

Speaker 423:57

Black bird is swinging.

Speaker 424:00

In the southern breeze

Speaker 424:04

Strange fruit hanging.

Speaker 424:08

From the poplar tree

Presenter24:11

Billy Holiday, singing Strange Fruit. Billy Holiday, who who

Presenter24:15

perhaps had a had a similar kind of dignity to the woman whom you've honored in your latest collection of poems called On the Bus with Rosa Parkes. Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person and stepped into history nineteen fifties, I think, Alabama.

Rita Dove24:31

Yeah.

Presenter24:33

Why did you choose her? Yeah.

Rita Dove24:35

Yeah.

Rita Dove24:37

I think

Rita Dove24:38

Nearly every American

Rita Dove24:42

It has been moved by the fact that Rosa Park's

Rita Dove24:48

did nothing. She sat. She stayed where she was and that her quiet dignity uh was what turned the tide in uh the civil rights movement in the United States.

Rita Dove25:01

She became an icon and she also realized, I think, the importance of being an icon because she's still alive today and she still inspires in people an awe and a love and a strength. You feel strength welling up in yourself when you see her sitting there.

Presenter25:17

There were, of course, other black women before her who'd refused to to give up their seats to a white person, but somehow it was Rosa who walked into history, as I say, not them. One of the others was called Claudette Colvin, and you've written about her, haven't you? W would you give me an extract from that?

Rita Dove25:32

I'd I'd love to. Claudette Colvin, um

Rita Dove25:36

now works nights at an old age home in New York City. And this poem, which is called Claudette Colvin Goes to Work, is told from her point of view. I'll just read the ending for you.

Rita Dove25:50

As if the most injury they can do Is insult the reason you're here at all, walking in your whites Down to the stop so you can make a living. So ugly, so fat, so dumb, so greasy, what do we have to do to make God love us? Mamma was a maid My daddy mowed lawns like a boy, And I'm the crazy girl off the bus, The one who wrote in class she was going to be President.

Rita Dove26:18

I take the Number six bus to the Lexington Avenue train, and then I'm there all night, adjusting the sheets, emptying the pans. And I don't curse or spit or kick and scratch like they say I did then.

Rita Dove26:34

I help those who can't help themselves. I do what needs to be done.

Rita Dove26:40

And I sleep whenever sleep comes down on me.

Rita Dove26:44

Record number six.

Rita Dove26:47

This recording of Tatiana Trojanos and Placito Domingo singing a duet from Carmen is one of my favorites. It's for several reasons. One of them is that I have started to sing amateur opera myself, and I have sung this role of Carmen in a production in Virginia back home.

Rita Dove27:11

This duet is so marvellous because musically they are

Rita Dove27:15

absolutely together and it's gorgeous. But emotionally what they're saying, they're miles apart and yet they end

Rita Dove27:22

On a note in unison, and you know that it's going to end a disaster at that point. It's beautiful.

Speaker 427:30

It was a poor.

Speaker 427:44

Please go.

Speaker 427:48

Peace and warm peacefulness, mercy of warming.

Speaker 428:10

And person what is the

Presenter28:27

Tatiana Troianos as Carmen, and Placido Domingo as Don Jose, singing part of their duet C'estois semois, from the end of Bize's Carmen, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. So you sing too, Rita. You've written a song cycle with music by John Williams, which was premiered at Tanglewood. You've written a novel. But but poetry is home, hm?

Rita Dove28:49

Poetry is home. Poetry is the skeleton upon which all all the literature, all the art for me is based. It's music, it's words, it's silence, it's all of that.

Presenter29:00

And where is

Rita Dove29:01

Uh

Presenter29:01

Yeah.

Rita Dove29:01

Where I'm living now is Charlottesville, Virginia, teaching at the University of Virginia. I've been there now for eight, nine years.

Rita Dove29:10

In a certain way, it's also the home of the United States. It's a place where so many American myths have conjoined, so to speak. Thomas Jefferson came from there. He built the university. He is perhaps the quintessential conflicted American soul. You have Washington, DC, two hours up the road. You have Richmond, Virginia, which was the cradle of the Confederacy, an hour down the road. It's just a it's a buzz with all of those different Americas.

Presenter29:41

And you live there with your husband, who's who's German, and your daughter, who is how old?

Rita Dove29:46

I thought

Presenter29:46

is sixteen.

Rita Dove29:48

Yeah.

Presenter29:48

And do you want her to be a doctor or a lawyer?

Rita Dove29:51

I want her to be happy. I want her to lead whatever life she wants to lead. At the moment she is majoring in um theater and in biology, so she's not sure yet either. Record number seven.

Rita Dove30:06

This record is um

Rita Dove30:09

A recent uh love, but it I've become so fanatical about it that it must go with me on the desert isle.

Rita Dove30:16

It's the album Luna Di Fuego from The Gypsy Kings, and we'll start with the opening.

Presenter30:51

The Gipsy Kings playing the opening of Amor dundia from their album Luna de Fuego. So to a desert island with you, Rita. Do you think you could hack it? Could you survive alone?

Rita Dove31:02

I don't know, but I will try. Uh

Presenter31:05

What would you do?

Rita Dove31:06

with yourself all day.

Rita Dove31:08

I would probably write. I would write. You'd be sealed off from the world, could you write?

Presenter31:11

You'd be sealed off.

Rita Dove31:15

Well, in that in the tradition of of Ovid, who who kept writing from his exile um from Rome in the hopes that some one would find it some day, I would keep writing, yes.

Presenter31:27

But what would keep you sane, do you think? Do you have a religious faith? Would would God deliver you in the end?

Rita Dove31:34

No, God wouldn't deliver me in the end. I don't have a religious faith. I think that that though the

Rita Dove31:41

In a certain way I do think that music and the memories of loved ones and of family and

Rita Dove31:51

And that kind of supporting human spirit would sustain me. It's what sustains me now, I think. So I think that would work. But it would not be a God.

Rita Dove32:00

Last record, last record.

Rita Dove32:03

Randy Newman singing God song from his album Sail Away.

Rita Dove32:10

Randy Newman has a remarkable way of

Rita Dove32:16

being satirical and at the same time very sad in his s s satire, as if he mourns the fact that this is so. And I think that that it it's a bit of the blues, and you know, he's a white man who has the blues, certainly.

Rita Dove32:33

But

Rita Dove32:34

It allows for compassion.

Rita Dove32:37

even when he's criticising something.

Rita Dove32:40

Uh this song is is really about

Rita Dove32:43

atheism, and y yet I also feel that he mourns the fact

Rita Dove32:49

that it has to be so.

Rita Dove32:51

And then that ambivalence is what

Rita Dove32:54

Uh moves me in the song.

Speaker 432:55

I recoil in horror.

Speaker 432:59

The fineness of thee

Speaker 433:04

From the squalor in the field

Speaker 433:08

Me as a re

Speaker 433:12

How we laugh up in hell

Speaker 433:17

Prayers you are all for me.

Speaker 433:21

That's

Presenter33:22

Uh

Speaker 433:22

Why love me and kind.

Presenter33:24

Randy Newman with God Song from his album Sail Away. Now, Rita, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would it have to be?

Rita Dove33:32

Ooh, that ooh What torture

Rita Dove33:37

I think it would be Keith Jarrett. I think it would what be what we opened with because um it is a piece that

Rita Dove33:47

opens me up, invites me to fly.

Presenter33:50

And what about your book? You've got the complete works of Shakespeare, you've got the Bible.

Rita Dove33:55

I know. That's wonderful. I mean, I it would have been Shakespeare if he hadn't given it to me already. I thank you for that. And the Bible is also good because the stories are wonderful and it does take care of all of the vicissitudes of human nature. So that would be good. Oh, I've I've struggled over this, but I think it would be

Rita Dove34:15

Ad Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Hundred Years of Solitude.

Presenter34:19

And what

Rita Dove34:19

About your luxury.

Presenter34:19

But you're luxury.

Rita Dove34:21

My luxury is a very I don't know if I can do this, but I'm gonna I know I can't take anything living, right? Mhm. But if it were possible to have a

Rita Dove34:31

A ballroom

Rita Dove34:33

with a with a holographic uh instructor or some someone that I could it doesn't have to be him it could be a robot in fact but just so that I could dance.

Rita Dove34:41

I've been um doing ball beam dancing for a while now and I would love to be able to dance when I feel really, really down on that desert isle.

Presenter34:50

Rita Dove, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Oh, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 135:02

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.