The skinny: George Polgreen Bridgetower was a violinist progeny, the son of a White European woman and a father who fancied himself a Black "African Prince." Bridgetower traveled from London to Vienna to meet Beethoven and the two hit it off spectacularly. Both music and drinking buddies. Moved by Bridgetower's skills, Ludwig dashed off an impossible violin sonata, which the young Bridgewater played flawlessly from sight reading. Maybe adding a thing or two in his playing. They hugged. Beethoven...

This is quite good--thought-provoking and lovely and ever so musical. Criticisms: The central incident is a *little* lightweight to support the book, and for some reason it's portrayed in this kind of Viennese-farce-drama which I didn't really understand. And I do wish I had known ahead of time that there were explanatory notes and a chronology in the back of the book, because some of the poems were quite opaque without them. Perhaps I should have read the table of contents--but who does that? S...

This collection of poems about George Bridgetower, Beethoven’s one-time protégé and a biracial man living in Europe (over a century before the term ‘biracial’ was even coined), are a mixed bag. They’re more good than not – and the poems have a lyricism that does justice to the importance of music in Mr. Bridgetower’s story – but I do feel like they miss some of the tension and conflict in the relationship between the two men. All the same, a lovely collection about a fascinating bit of history.

So I am no poetry buff but I loved this lyrical narrative. First it was about one of my favorite periods in history and it was broken up into short poems so if I didn't understand something it did not have a domino effect on my understanding of the overall piece. Rita Dove's writing is so clever. She uses all different kinds of different poetic styles to communicate the story. I found the variety refreshing. I wish I had discovered the notes and chronology at the beginning so if you do decide to...

 How Does a Shadow Shine?Having read so many novels recently written with the sensibility of a poet, I was curious to see what former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove would make of this cycle of 85 poems that together take the form of a novel. A biographical novel about a footnote to musical history: the mulatto violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower. Beethoven (who ought to know) called him a crazy genius (gran pazzo) and was inspired to write him his most difficult violin sonata. But the two quarrele...

A book of poetry that attempts to tell a story but not in ballad or epic form can be challenging at best and impossible to comprehend at worst. To her credit, Rita Dove has done an exceptional job of describing an incident in the life of one George Augustus Polgreen Bridgewater whose fifteen minutes of fame came in the early nineteenth century when, as a child prodigy violinist, he played and improvised with Beethoven himself on piano, what became the Sonata No. 9 for Violin and Piano, known tod...

3.5 stars i guess??rtc- a rating can't sum up my thoughts on this one adequately

Having become familiar with Rita Dove via HBO's Def Poetry series, I did not know what to expect from this book from the multifaceted former poet laureate- These poems are a series of beautiful dreams, starting with a message in bottle and ending with a solitary mapquest driven drive through european rain. Dove bites William Carlos Williams' so sweet and so cold, but times it so neatly (if indiscreetly) that it is a plummy pleasure to find. lush, lovely images tie and tell the story of George Br...

Very interesting and distinctly different approach to story-telling. I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this one. Fairly slim in size, but this takes time to read, as I re-read many sections to both savor the language and to figure out what was happening. Although there are some beautiful images and lovely turns of phrase, the poetry itself didn't really bowl me over most of the time. Ambitious, but not always effective, for me.

I enjoyed this book in more ways than I can say. It's poetry, beauty, history, biography, theatre, character study, art, ars poetica, philosophy, wit, charm, pageant and social study in one. It's a book-length set of poems about someone nearly lost to history, and yet every piece stands on its own even while building the story and the plot. The concept is brilliant, the delivery nearly flawless, the range of ideas, observations and illuminations breathtaking. It's that rare book, let alone that

George Bridgetower was an interesting footnote when I read The Hemingses of Monticello earlier this year. So when I happened to come across this book in the library, I was compelled enough to pick it up. I don't normally read poetry, I like to listen to it and I prefer small doses to full books, but there are some very beautiful pieces here, as Dove reimagines a somewhat lost piece of history.

The Story Of An Early Black ViolinistThis long narrative poem by the former United States Poet Laureate Rita Dove tells the story of the brief relationship between George Bridgetower a virtuoso violinist and Ludwig van Beethoven. Bridgetower (1780 -- 1860) was the son of an African/Carribean father known as the "African Prince" and a German/Polish mother. Bridgetower thus was a mulatto. He was a child prodigy on the violin and gave his first concert in Paris, just before the French Revolution, a...

A collection of short poems written from multiple points of view, recounting the true story of a black prodigy violinist who vastly impressed Beethoven, with whom he premiered what was later titled the Kreuzer Sonata. The book is a truly impressive feat of imagination and execution. My only complaint is that occasionally I was unable to figure out from context exactly who was supposed to have authored a given poem. Even so, the period, the characters, and the music were vividly evoked.

From my perspective, this is book is an unmitigated masterpiece. But before I go further, you should understand my perspective.I'm a full-time professional classical musician, specifically a composer-conductor. I'm also a part-time music historian and writer. I'm a reader of poetry and a lover of language and languages (particularly French and German.)OK, given that, this volume hit every possible interest of mine. It is a biographical sketch in the form of a book of poems, but beyond that, it's...

Sonata Mulattica: A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play (2009) by former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove has a rather unusual format. Fundamentally it is a collection of poems, but at the same time it is a sort of biographic novel. The poems are a lyric narrative of the life of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1778 –1860). Bridgetower was a biracial (Afro-Caribbean, Polish, German) virtuoso violinist. There is not an abundance of information available about Bridgetower so the events are la...

This is one of my favorite books of poetry in a long, long while. I can't even imagine the amount of work and research it must have taken to complete it, and the poetry itself was absolutely beautiful. Because of the great variety, there were definitely poems I loved more than others, but the book never dragged. It was fantastic.The only negative thing I have to say about it is that, because it was written via poetry, Bridgetower's life didn't exactly get explained all that well. But that honest...

I'm looking forward to this poem sequence about a violon virtuoso who was the original dedicatee of Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata." The New Yorker calls it "accessible" and compares it to a historical novel.

In Beethoven time, apparently there was a virtuous pianist whom Beethoven mentored. He was of African descent and a prince. I am glad I have learned that there may have been some one who was just as brilliant as Beethoven. Rita Dove poetry in this collection ranges in styles from narrative to lyrical to satire...I find it to be not here most rigorous work such the the sonnets of Mother Love. Yet to be able to tell a story through all those characters during that time and so elegantly is impressi...

I'd heard the author on the Diane Rehm show and was excited to get this book. It was better than I expected. I had not read poetry since my college days and was a bit intimidated to pick up something entitled "poems" but I dove in. These poems are wonderful. A great story. Beautiful imagery, even tantalizing in places. Funny too. I highly recommend this.

Find it at JMRL: http://bit.ly/1J8a42g Dove was the Poet Laureate of VA from 2004-2006, and is now the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English at UVA in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, writer Fred Viebahn. http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/