Rita Dove's verse drama The Darker Face of the Earth is a curiously important text in her oeuvre. Curious, because while its initial publication date is 1994, it originates, according to Dove, in the late 1970s and was first drafted in the early 1980s, thus placing it with her earliest work (Pereira interview 185-87). Furthermore, after its initial publication, it was substantially rewritten, resulting in a "completely revised second edition," according to the cover of the 1996 ...