An Interview with Rita Dove

What follows is the script of a raw interview conducted by Sally Michael Hanna and Duccio Basosi with Rita Dove in Venice. I have been personally lucky to meet Rita Dove in Venice during Incroci di Civilta, the literary festival that has taken place in April 2014. I have Dr. Pia Masiero to thank for that, the chief organizer of the festival and my best friend and fellow academic for extending the invitation to me and to 6 October University to participate and for generously opening her home to me in Venice. Without her, this interview would not have been possible.  It is worthy to note in this regard that I have read Rita Dove’s work and have written extensively about all the poetry volumes she wrote. I have always found her work a source of inspiration in that she has given me a lot of food for thought, generous with both word and thought opening up worlds of myriad connections in which the impossible is only a step away. Hers is a comprehensive experience in which poetry courts all sorts of arts imaginable, music, paintings, dance and song. My meeting with Dove has confirmed one idea that selecting her as an author to read for a Ph.D was no coincidence but was rather a guided choice blessed by the love of the arts, the power of the word and the endless potential of imagination and the human mind.