This video segment from Poetry Everywhere features the poet Rita Dove reading her poem “American Smooth” at the Dodge Poetry Festival. “American Smooth” is the title poem of a collection of Rita Dove’s poems about dancing. “…When I began to appreciate the technical intricacies of each [dance] style,” says Dove, “the rise upon tiptoe, [or] the gradual lowering from tiptoe that one executes in the second half of the third beat of the waltz—only then did ‘American Smooth’ start to shimmer into being.”

For a biography of the poet Rita Dove, please visit the Poetry Foundation Web site.