Watching Toni Morrison accept the National Book Critics Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award last night, bookended by standing ovations, wheelchair-bound but undiminished in a shimmering silver dress and jaunty grey beret, was a little like watching Bruce Springsteen perform a nostalgia gig at the Stone Pony. She’s an arena player, the only living American winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. To see her in the New School’s auditorium (elegant and spacious as it is) on the night of the Nbcc awards (influential as they are) is to be reminded that book critics are most excited not by their collective power, but by their ability to surprise — even upstage.The 84-year-old novelist began her speech with the same comic bravado she brought to a recent appearance on The Colbert Report. After the poet Rita Dove introduced her by invoking Athena and orchids (“the queen bees of the flower...
- 3/13/2015
- by Boris Kachka
- Vulture
Washington — President Barack Obama on Monday honored several artists, writers and organizations for their contributions to the nation, and pledged to make the arts and humanities a priority for as long as he is in the White House.
Obama bestowed eight National Medal of Arts and nine National Humanities Medals during a ceremony in the White House East Room. Among this year's recipients were actor Al Pacino, poet Rita Dove and the United Service Organization, which holds performances for American service members stationed around the world.
Before awarding the medals, Obama said the arts have the power to bring together people of different backgrounds and beliefs. And he urged the honorees to help mentor a new generation of artists and scholars, saying their role in the nation's future would be equally as important as the next generation of engineers and scientists.
"The arts and humanities do not just reflect America,...
Obama bestowed eight National Medal of Arts and nine National Humanities Medals during a ceremony in the White House East Room. Among this year's recipients were actor Al Pacino, poet Rita Dove and the United Service Organization, which holds performances for American service members stationed around the world.
Before awarding the medals, Obama said the arts have the power to bring together people of different backgrounds and beliefs. And he urged the honorees to help mentor a new generation of artists and scholars, saying their role in the nation's future would be equally as important as the next generation of engineers and scientists.
"The arts and humanities do not just reflect America,...
- 2/13/2012
- by AP
- Huffington Post
Fred Viebahn Rita Dove
Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate, and she’s also a competitive ballroom dancer. A professor at the University of Virginia, Dove now has another credit to her name: editor of the new Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry.
The anthology, a sienna clothbound release, looks like something that would be kept in a walnut bookshelf in the library of some British manor house. But this is a distinctly American book,...
Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate, and she’s also a competitive ballroom dancer. A professor at the University of Virginia, Dove now has another credit to her name: editor of the new Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry.
The anthology, a sienna clothbound release, looks like something that would be kept in a walnut bookshelf in the library of some British manor house. But this is a distinctly American book,...
- 10/26/2011
- by Barbara Chai
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
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