Rita Dove: From An American Poet to Sonata Mulattica

Austin, TX - More than ten years have passed since I first worked with Rita Dove in what became one of the most intimate portraits I’ve ever had the privilege to make — Rita Dove: An American Poet. In that film, Rita’s voice lead us through the landscapes that shaped her imagination: Akron’s industrial horizon, the hymns of her childhood church, the sound of her father’s telescope extending toward the stars, and the quiet discipline of a young girl learning the cello. Every element of her story — her family, her music, her memories — resonated like distinct instruments within a larger composition about America, identity, and the making of a poet.

Rita Dove and Eduardo Montes-Bradley

Now, a decade later, I find myself returning to Rita’s world — this time through Sonata Mulattica, her collection of poems about the ordeal of George Bridgetower, the mixed-race violin virtuoso who once performed alongside Beethoven and for whom the “Kreutzer Sonata” was originally composed. Our new film, now in the development stage, will explore the same questions that have defined much of my work and that Rita herself has examined throughout her poetry: How does art cross boundaries of time, race, and geography? How do personal histories intersect with larger cultural currents? And how do we, as artists, give voice to those who were silenced or forgotten?

The Roots of Collaboration

When I made Rita Dove: An American Poet, what struck me most was how her creative process is inseparable from her lived experience. She spoke of how place defines consciousness — how the geography of her hometown, nestled between two rivers, shaped her sense of belonging and movement. She reflected on how her father’s work in the rubber factories of Akron became a metaphor for the American Dream, both its possibilities and its fractures. The poem “The Zeppelin Factory” emerged from those same landscapes of labor and noise, where progress and loss are often indistinguishable.

In that same conversation, she described her earliest encounters with music — her first cello, chosen on impulse, its sound “luscious, something you could almost eat.” It was there that I first sensed the parallel between her musical and poetic structures: the rise and fall of emotion, the interplay of silence and rhythm, the improvisational energy she carries into language.

Rita also spoke of her travels — her experiences in Mexico and Germany, each profoundly altering her understanding of identity and belonging. In Mexico, she encountered the liberating hospitality of a culture that received her not as a stranger but as kin; in Germany, as a young Fulbright scholar, she faced the complexity of postwar guilt and the awareness of being simultaneously American, Black, and woman. Both journeys shaped her poetics of empathy — a quality that continues to define her work and that we will bring to the screen once again in Sonata Mulattica.

Revisiting the Continuum

In many ways, this new film is an echo and an evolution of the earlier one. Rita Dove: An American Poet explored the making of a voice — Sonata Mulattica examines how that voice reaches back through history, giving sound and dignity to a musician who, like so many others, was erased from the canon. The project aligns closely with my ongoing interest in artistic legacies and hidden contributions — from the Piccirilli Brothers who carved America’s marble ideals to the forgotten composers, sculptors, and artisans whose work shaped our shared visual and sonic heritage.

Sonata Mulattica

For Rita, Sonata Mulattica was an act of recovery through poetry; for me, this new film is the continuation of that recovery through image and sound. Together, we hope to build a cinematic bridge between the worlds of poetry and music — between Dove’s verse and Bridgetower’s violin, between the concert hall and the page, between memory and imagination.

A Circle Completed

It feels profoundly meaningful to reunite with Rita after all these years — to extend the conversation that began in Rita Dove: An American Poet into a new creative horizon. Much has changed since we first filmed together, but the essence remains: a shared belief that art — whether written, sung, or filmed — has the power to make history visible and to make the invisible resonate.

As we prepare for the next movement in this collaboration, I find myself thinking of something Rita said during our first interview: “I need to feel why I’m standing right where I am at that moment. I need to feel how I fit on the earth.” It is perhaps the most honest definition of artistic purpose I’ve ever heard — and it continues to guide me, as filmmaker and listener, into this new work we are creating together.