Through the Ivory Gate

In her first novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Dove ( Grace Notes ) covers territory familiar from her poems. Virginia King, a talented young black woman, returns to her hometown of Akron, Ohio, as artist-in-residence at an elementary school. The story moves back and forth between the present, which finds her teaching puppetry to children, and her past, which includes memories of a constricting community and family life and the liberation offered by college and her stint with a communal puppet theater. Poets turned novelists often rely too heavily on lyricism and imagery to sustain them, to the detriment of plot and exposition; Dove, however, leans a little too far in the opposite direction. The narrative is smooth and accomplished, but takes few risks. The climactic love scene, for example, ends in the disappointment of cliche (``When he touched her again their bodies merged into one long, yearning curve, and the sea rose up to meet them''), and the novel's single real surprise, a revelation of incest, is less shocking than puzzling and unprepared for. Virginia seems to gain knowledge--without being deeply changed by it. Dove could have experimented more daringly with her obvious narrative gifts. (Oct.)