From the north, the Y-shaped All America Bridge carries traffic over the Cuyahoga River gorge. It splits in midair into two concrete spillways leading downtown; one an almost straight shot onto High Street, the other describing a ribbony curve before straightening into Broadway. To the south, Opportunity Parkway leads in or out of the city, depending on your perspective. 21st century Akron. Her population of 200,000 is a little less than it was in 1920, when she was the tire capital of the world and had ballooned by 130,000 citizens in 10 years. She was a city of densely packed smokestacks and steeples then, of smokebleared skies. Her eyes have seen their share of triumph and of malaise, of destruction and rebirth. Akron, oh Akron, OH. She has also inspired a child from one of her modest neighborhoods to immortalize her in a series of poems that won the highest literary prize in the land.
Akron’s poetic champion is Rita Dove. She has been Poet Laureate of America, the youngest person to ever hold that post. She is only the second African American poet ever to win the Pulitzer Prize. She is as much a product of Akron as a Goodyear tire, but more supple. She ballroom dances and plays viola da gamba. Dove has lovingly rendered her hometown in Thomas and Beulah—the book that won her the Pulitzer—in a novel called Through the Ivory Gate, and in other poems scattered throughout her seven other books of poetry. Rita Dove is no longer a resident of Akron, but when she grew up there, she kept her eyes and ears wide open, and took in the city with a poet’s intensity. Her major subject is the stories that do not make it into the history books. In a poem called “The Gorge,” she writes of the Cuyahoga river receding, leaving “a trail / Of anecdotes, / The poor man’s history.” That is Dove’s territory.
