In the poem Used, Rita Dove comments on the lack of innocence in society. In the first line, Dove writes, “The conspiracy to make us thin.” This means that society is trying to deprive everyone of depth of character and innocence. After this, Dove begins to comment on the uniformity of society as everyone wants “size threes.” The juxtaposition of man and child to express that children are overexposed and cannot preserve their innocence. Following this, Dove uses the word preadolescent to demonstrate how strange it is for a child to be thinking about the sexuality of women at such a young age. The phrase Tabula rasa is latin for blank slate. The use of latin in this sense shows how the concept of a blank slate was a thing of the past, where currently, a child born into the world is instantaneously being influenced by society and forced into conformity. Frequently throughout the poem, Dove uses the subject pronoun “we.” This both pulls the reader into the issue being outline, and exposes them to the “conspiracy” going on without notice by anyone. Dove writes, “we’ve earned the navels sunk in grief when the last child emptied us of their brief interior light.” Dove uses the word “last” to demonstrate that absolutely no children have “light” or innocence and originality. The navels sunk in grief represent how even an embryo, floating in amniotic fluid, in a place that is perceived as completely safe, is impacted by grief. No one is safe! Dove writes, “Have you ever tried silk sheets? I did…” The sheets represent materialistic values as sleeping on silk sheets is incredibly impractical. The last part of the poem “It’s hard work staying cool” demonstrates how the stress that comes with bearing the pressure of societal conformity is hard on children and also demands a return to the preservation of the innocence of children.
I agree with your analysis that the poem “Used” is just simply another way of saying how children are born into this society bearing so much pressure to conform to the social norms. I even wrote about this in my blog about the poem “Heroes” and I think this theme fits this poem as well. I agree that society in today’s world seems to have one giant spotlight on you at such a young age when we can’t decipher our toes to our fingers, to see how you would handle situations and if you fit into the society well enough. We are born into this world already having to try and fit ourselves to this definite mold that this society has made for everyone, and if you don’t fit then you don’t belong. That’s how things have been and that’s how things will be in the future, unfortunately.
In Rita Dove’s indefinable sonnet, “Wiederkehr”, multiple connotations and allusions can be found that relate to the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Some of the definitions given for “wiederkehr” included: return; recurrence; repetition; anniversary. Alluding to the Greek myth, the use of “wiederkehr” in the title can symbolize Persephone’s return to the Underworld and the world above when the seasons change. Also present in the three lines of this poem is an allusion to Dove’s “Persephone, Falling” and Greek myth of Narcissus; “Which is why, when the choice appeared, I reached for it.” In Rita Dove’s “Persephone, Falling”, there was “One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder”. In “Wiederkehr”, Persephone reached for the narcissus, thus condemning half her life to the Underworld and Hades. Dove makes multiple allusions to the Greek god Hades, as well as his motives for keeping Persephone in the Underworld. This is evident in lines 8-12; “He merely hoped, in darkness, to smell rain; and though he saw how still I sat to hold the rain untouched inside me, he never asked if I would stay”. The darkness is resemblant of the Underworld which is Hades’s home, as well as his macabre personality. Rain is commonly a symbol of a sign of life in literature; it allows plants to grow, life to sustain, and is a sign of hope in a drought or desert. When Hades sought the untouched rain inside of Persephone, he sought the purity in her heart, her liveliness and hope that was nonexistent in the Underworld. In the first line, Dove writes, “He only wanted me for happiness”; this recognizes how Hades had only captured Persephone for his own pleasure and had neglected any consideration of Persephone’s happiness or state of mind.
In the poem Primer, it talks about a sixth grade girl who gets made fun of and beat up but her mom comes in to save the day. Rita Dove shows both sides of wanting to prove yourself as a kid, the lack of control over your surroundings and the wanting to stand up for yourself. Around this age many kids want to start showing independence from their parents, so when her mom stepped in it was embarrassing and frustrating. The main character wants to be able to fend for herself even when she does not have the ability to. In this case, the character is shown to be powerless by the bullies and by her mother. She even describes her mother as short and the bullies as thin to try and make them seem less threatening. They both have the ability to stop each other with force unlike the main character, who recognizes her weakness. The main character sees power as being able to physically and forcefully defend herself, which is why in the last line she says that she will grow up. She is saying one day she will be powerful enough to prove herself. This adds to her self disappointment because not only did she need her mom to help her but she knows she would have lost if she tried to fight the bullies. In the end she just wants to escape the situation, not even seeing her mother as a helper but as someone else who is more powerful than her.
I agree with your analysis of this poem, and unfortunately this is something that a lot of people in school deal with. In many cases, children do not even tell their parents of what is happening when they are being bullied. I think in a way this shows that mother daughter relationship as strong, as the child was confident enough to tell her mother. Although she is a little embarrassed when her mother steps in to save the day, and I think that is something many people can relate to, when you tell your parents something and then they try to fix it or get involved somehow, even when you ask them not too. I thought that the last line of this poem was really interesting, "I'd show them all: I would grow up,"(14). The main character, in a way, seems very vengeful and wants to get revenge on these bullies in a way, and I think the way she decided to do this was to grow up, to be the bigger person.
This poem describes the ancient story of Demeter and how she had her daughter, Persephone, taken a way from her to the underworld. This poem is very interesting because it takes on a strong tone of anger and depression, to the point where the narrator describes her pain and strong sense of love that they are willing to stop harvesting the crops, which is shown when the author writes,"I will drag my grief through a winter of my own making and refuse any meadow that recycles itself into hope." . This poem was able to describe the relationship between Demeter and her daughter in a concentrated matter and show that the relationship is a very power thing. Rita Dove most likely used the story within this poem to represent the strong relationship every mother has for their child and to emphasize the importance of a mother-daughter relation.
In the Poem “Heroes” by Rita Dove, tells a short story about a person who picks a wilting flower from an already dying field of flowers and weeds. It then continues on saying that a lady yells at the person for picking the flower, this person then kills the lady and dashes off with the flower. I think the main lesson of this story isn’t the obvious, don’t pick the last flower in a field of wilting flowers or you will have to kill someone and become a criminal that hides for the rest of their lives. I think the main idea is that we personally are the flower. We are one person (flower) in a huge society (field of weeds) that is expecting us to just finally fall over and give into what everyone else is already doing, hence the last flower starting to wilt. We, as people, are so afraid of what people think about us and if we fit into the social norm of today’s society, that we fail to recognize that this only allows us to drift farther and farther from our true self. We put on this fake persona so that we will be liked by others around us. Before we know it we are almost to the point at finally giving in and becoming just like everybody else. The importance of the person picking the last flower is the realization that we don’t need to be like everybody else and that we are unique and different from each other in our own way. The last line of the poem is “Because it was the last one and you knew it was going to die.” tells us, the readers that, society expects us to fall over and give it to them, because that is what everyone else did, and now it was your turn. Expectations are sometimes not worth having, because you never know if there is so much out there.
In the poem "Golden Oldie" by Rita Dove, the author conveys the idea of man’s innate desire for love by showing how overcoming it can be at times. Describing the sensation as resting to “float on a film of sweat,” Dove supports the concept of how man yearns for love within himself, even though, at times, he may never have any. The narrator of the poem continues to say how they lament as to where their lover is, despite not knowing “who my lover might be, or where to start looking.” This quote specifically is impactful, as it shows that, often, people fall less in love with a person and more in love with the idea of being in love. At least, according to Dove, that is. That notion in particular supports the overall theme that man desires love to no end and, often, to no avail. Love, to man, surpasses logic and the present. It is simply a desire, something one will travel to whatever end to satisfy. Dove ties this to how love can overcome a person, with the narrator describing herself as “swaying at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune.” Here, she shows how it can motivate-- or even force-- actions, thoughts, and emotions. All this integrates into the theme and is found within the poem’s internal structure.
In the poem The Narcissus Flower, there is a general sad tone. This poem caught my attention because of the shear complexity. It is something that at first glance is really confusing, but makes a lot of sense once you start to pick it apart. This poem is an allusion to the greek myth about the narcissus . In this myth, there is a man who is so in love with his reflection. There was one line that struck me as interesting, “I found myself at/ the center of a calm so pure, it was hate,” (8-9). This is an oxymoron because usually when you think of the word calm you think of peacefulness which is usually not associated with hate. I feel like this could be an allusion to the myth itself as, this person was so fixated on something in their life that instead of it being something that they loved, it became something that was simply a chore and hateful to do or to look at. In general, since this is from her collection of Mother Love poems, this poem is a mother giving her daughter advise based off of her own experiences, a line that was also very interesting goes as follows, “but the way I could see my own fingers and hear/ myself scream as the blossom incinerated,”(3-4). This provides some visual as well as auditory imagery, but also provides this sort of shift in tone to be more omnious. It is suggested that perhaps that the narrator, the mother in this case, has some sort of personal connection to this flower that was being burned. Flowers usually represent purity, or vulnerability. Perhaps that signifies the mother's innocence of some sort being lost, and she doesn't want her daughter making the same mistake and so she tells her that she can make of her life what she wants, that there is always something more, “you can live beyond dying,” (12). The general advice given in this poem is similar to a theme in Siddhartha, where you can better yourself.
In the poem "The Bistro Styx", we can make the immediate assumption that the poem references Demeter and Persephone as mentioned in earlier class discussions; or to be more broad, the relationship between mother and daughter. We can make this assumption with the word "Styx" in the title, which is part of a Greek Mythology, the River Styx, a deity and a river that connects Earth to the Underworld. The word Bistro originates from France and throughout the poem, Dove uses complex French terms like Parisians (native in Paris), Chateaubriand (type of steak), Camemebert (type of cheese), and lavaliere (a type of jewelry that contains one stone hanging from a necklace; was made popular by a mistress of King Louis XIV of France) to connect mythology to the modern world. In this case a daughter in Paris is slowly losing connections with her mother due to the modern world. This loss of connection can be seen when the daughter continues to talk about food and her career as a subject for art. The mother immediately notices that something has changed about her daughter when she walked into the Bistro wearing all gray. Gray is a color that depicts dull, boring, and depressing things but it can also symbolize things like sophistication, maturity, and formality. The mention of clothes appeared frequently throughout the poem, and the most important thing to note is that when the daughter is talking about her artist, he is wearing all black. Black is a symbolism of death, and when we are comparing this poem to Greek Mythology, we can assume that the artist the daughter is working with is Hades. From there we can assume that the daughter (Persephone) has unfortunately been caught up in the artist's (Hades') life, which is ultimately affecting the relationship between her and her mother (Demeter). After many interrupted conversations, the mother can see that her daughter is never satisfied with anything, so her attention span and her connections to her mother have disappeared entirely, which is why in the end of the poem, the mother finally realizes that she has lost her daughter when she let her out of her grasps and into the real world.
The poem Tou Wan Speaks to Her Husband, Liu Sheng really stood out to me. After a little research, I found that Liu Sheng was the Prince of the Han Dynasty in ancient China, and he and his wife were buried in a tomb which was found in 1968 in Beijing, China. The tomb was dug out of the side of a mountain and had thousands of ancient artifacts inside, and the two bodies were encased in Jade burial suits. After reading the poem again, I had a little bit of a freakout. I realized that this “house” that Tou Wan was building was actually the tomb. I looked at the layout of the tomb and to my surprise, it’s the exact same as in the poem, clearly, this is about the tomb. Many artifacts were referenced too, the “incense burner in the form of the mountains around you, “ is a reference to the Boshan Censer, an incense burner shaped like a mountain, found in the tomb. As well as the Changxin Lamp, a bronze lamp shaped like a maid, “a statue of the palace girl you most frequently coveted”. And of course the Jade Burial suit “to keep the shape of your death”. These were put on to keep the flesh-soul in the body, which was believed to remain in the body for a year after death, that’s what “the privilege to stay alive, a year, together” comes from. The It feels like Tou Wan has a sense of contempt for her husband like she wants him dead. When she says ”the stench of your own diminishing drives you to air (but you will find none)” it's like she wants him to suffer and find no escape. Apparently, she knows about his affairs with other women and is unhappy about it, but there's probably more to that. She wants him to see these his faults and suffer from them in the tomb.
I see your points about how this poem reflects that of the Prince of the Han Dynasty, but I also believe that the poem entails that Wan truly loves her husband and thinks that he is of higher power. Dove even writes, “only conqueror” to describe Wan’s husband. Even in the beginning of the poem, for example, Dove tells us, “I will build you a house, of limited chambers, but it shall last forever”. In this quote, Tou Wan compares her love to this house that she will build. It will seem modest, but it will in fact be endless. Tou Wan seems to show her love to her husband throughout the whole poem but I think Dove is trying to tell us something more about romance. During this time period it was not about love, but it was about the woman loving the man and the man not loving the woman back. Because during this time period it was not about love but rather the woman being a servant to the man.
The poem "Nestor’s Bathtub" by Rita Dove is an interesting tale of sorts. In my opinion the poem the wife of Nestor, King of Pylos, in Greek mythology. The legend goes that Nestor went to fight with the greeks in the Trojan war. While he was gone his wife indulged in many of his expenses and his privileges. One being the bathtub which she loved very much, almost as much as indulging in her husband and making love. Nestor would do all the work and day to day tasks as Dove writes, “counting the jars of oil”. Dove describes Nestor’s wife as having, “white hands” to say that Nestor’s wife did not do any work around the palace and often was expected to be pampered. But as he was gone she had an affair with one of their servants. I believe this because Dove says “dirt from a lover's back” to imply that she had cheated. So when Nestor arrived back to his kingdom from the war, being unharmed, he was alarmed to find that his kingdom was destroyed. The only thing that still was there was all of his wife's extravagances. Dove tells us this by writing, “only the tub stands” and the “remains of ivory combs and 2,853 tall-stemmed drinking cups in the pantry”. This whole story is pretty ironic, because after Nestor comes back from fighting in the war, he comes back to find his wife who was left with everything she has ever wanted and she has been cheating on him, yet everything in his kingdom has been destroyed except for her extravagances. I think the reason why Dove wrote this story was to convey to the reader that even though this home belonged to Nestor, it was his wife, a normal woman that it truly was a part of, therefore the bathtub was hers and not Nestor's. It has so much to do with a woman’s life that will go on forever, unspoken.
I agree with your analysis of this poem. Another thing that I found interesting about this poem is the fact that the beginning line says, "As usual, legend got it all/ wrong...". I think that this line in a way shows how there is always more to the myth than one thinks. This idea that legend does not always get things right is found again later in the poem, "Legend, as usual, doesn't/ say." Perhaps it could be talking about how this is the only thing people see on the outside, but there could have been so much more going on in their marriage that could have led his wife to cheat on him. Which is why this whole story is pretty ironic because of the fact that everything is destroyed except for the things that she loved the most, almost like a constant reminder of his wife and what she had done, and that she will live on, in a sense.
The poem Sonnet in Primary Colors by Rita Dove is really interesting for many reasons. This poem makes many allusions to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, not only are there allusions to her but her life as well. One thing Kahlo was famous for was her appearance, she had a unibrow and this is mentioned twice in this poem, “This is for the women with one black wing/ perched over her eyes…,” (1-2). The wing over her eyes refers to her unibrow, her eyebrows are referenced again in the last line, “... Diego’s love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow,” (11-13). An allusion in this line, besides the one to her brows, is to her husband. Frida Kahlo was married to a man called Diego Rivera, who was also a painter. Aside from the rest of the allusions to her life in this poem, I wanted to point something else out that I thought was really interesting, the fact that this poem has the word ‘sonnet’ in the title, yet it only contains thirteen lines. Why would Rita call this poem a sonnet if it is not a sonnet? My guess is that sonnets usually give off this impression of perfection. Sonnets are usually very carefully constructed and crafted with specific words, and are very lyrical and perfect in way, and are usually look at as romantic. Because of this fact, the word sonnet in this case is used ironically, as the contents of this poem are far from having that perfect fairytale tone to it.
I think that the point you made about Dove’s ironic use of “sonnet” in the title was interesting. Although there is some rhyming, evident in the second and fifth lines, as well as in lines three and four, it seems more random and disorganized than in typical sonnets. When I read “Sonnet in Primary Colors”, I also noticed more allusions besides the ones you found that related to Frida Kahlo. The seventh line, “Each night she lay down in pain and rose” alludes to the pain that Frida suffered her whole life after an accident in her youth, leaving her handicapped for the rest of her life. Additionally, the fourth and fifth lines of the Dove’s poem allude to Frida Kahlo’s famed self-portraits, “who painted herself a present-- wildflowers entwining the plaster corset”. In the painting, a circlet of thorns cut into Kahlo’s neck and she is surrounded by greens and nature.
The poem is written from the perspective of a young slave. Rita Dove uses a lot of imagery and literary devices in this poem to convey the emotion behind it. The main character watches the field slaves as they are forced to get up before dawn and are whipped if they are too slow. They watch the house slaves and they fears to become one of them like their sister. Even in the heat of the morning, they shiver in fear of their future. Rita Dove uses similes in lines nine and fourteen. The first one, “while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick” is used to show that the white slave owners are hard and unable to be bent, like ivory, even if they are as slim as a toothpick. The slave owners are seen as uncaring and unable to be reasoned with. The second one, “they spill like bees among the fat flowers” compares the slaves to worker bees as they filter into the cotton fields for the day’s work. Like the bees, the slaves have to work tirelessly for their master all day with little reward and in fear. Both of these paint a very clear picture of what this slave is seeing as he looks out the window one morning. Most of the imagery in this poem reveals things as dark and unpleasant. This represents how the main character feels scared and hopeless about where they live and what their life will be like.
You make an excellent point about this being written from the perspective of a slave and its impact. Of the poems read, this one seems to put the most emphasis, as we can see not only who is making the claims but, rather, who is living them. Being able to witness that "I weep" establishes a connection within the perspective; in other words, we can more easily see ourselves in the slave's place. The potency of this is empathy, that being the readers can empathize and feel for the slave in a way that is more than pity, that when the slave notes that "It is not yet daylight," we can understand how dreadful the process is. Dove uses a variety of methods to convey this, but her perspective choice is definitely among the most effective.
This poem was a little unique in comparison to the others in the packet that was handed out. It had an almost excessive amount of capitalization of words that caught my interest. In this poem, it describes a government that is treating her poorly- white politicians ("...known of Men with Faces like the Moon, who would ride toward me..."). The purpose of capitalization in this poem is to create a mocking and derogatory tone towards the reader, so that the audience could experience the same feelings and emotions that she is feeling toward her government, or her government towards her. Rita Dove was able to express that this nation is lead by whites. Another interesting aspect in the change of tone within this poem was when Dove took on the perspective of Belinda. When Dove writes,"I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave." the tone of the poem is very forward and almost proud. The purpose of this is to say that everyone must stand up for what they are and fight for a better situation.
The 'poem', "Catherine of Alexandria," embodies the frailty of Rita Dove's poetry. The attempt at constructing a workable piece of poetic literature falls flat as it fails to diverge from legitimately the exact same pattern present in almost all of Rita's other work: random breaks, no rhyme scheme, and a plot that requires other literature to understand what, really, was not worth understanding in the first place. We consider the idea of poetry all the time-- what is poetry, what constitutes a poem-- and yet, as I ponder this question, I cannot fathom a simple definition that would be able to carry this 'poem' under its wing. A short-lived, thin telling of the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the piece, in truth, never evolves beyond simply being just an ambiguous telling of events with random structure tilted towards an audience that likely will never understand it. Take, for example, any of the four breaks found within. Stanza 1 abruptly ends with "came as a voice" and finishes the line in Stanza 2 with "in your bed." What purpose does this serve, you may be asking. Excellent question! I can answer it by not responding, for it has none, one could argue. Let us consider, as another example, some of the literary devices utilized. The last line of the piece, "a ring of milk," is a clear metaphor referring to some representation of either Jesus's clothing, to which she refers earlier in the piece, or of some holy construct, a manifestation of the "promise" the poem brings up. In reality, though, what this accomplishes is all for naught, for the substance of the piece elsewhere is not there. That, in truth, is the true telling of these pieces: empty re-tellings of events with poetic devices thrown in so as to supply the feel of some elevated literary piece. We must ask: had we presented any other poet of fame with such work, would they look upon it as an equal, or of a piece of disgust? Would Poe be moved, or shamed, by the work? Would Whitman, with his verses of "O Captain, My Captain" a proper telling of historical events with real purpose, read with interest, or with boredom? It is unlikely any of them would look favorably upon such a piece, a product seeking merely to mimic their great works, not reinvent the ideas of the past or improve upon the path of literature for the future. If so, why must we look at it differently?
In Rita Dove’s poem, “Canary” to Michael S. Harper, Dove commemorates jazz singer Billie Holiday through symbolism and metaphorical language. Symbolism is present in the title of the poem; a canary is a small songbird, previously used in coal mines as an early warning system, using their song to alert the miners of toxic gases. Birds are also typically used in literature as a symbol of light, life, and freedom, which is retouched in the last line of the poem, “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.” Billie Holiday, who faced many difficulties and suffered from substance abuse, is relatable to a canary, a small songbird who brought light into the world during her time through her songs and music.
In the first stanza of “Canary”, Dove describes Billie Holiday’s voice and persona. “Billie Holiday’s burned voice had as many shadows as lights, a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano, the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.” Holiday’s “burned” voice was described as being raspy and she had a low vocal range that was further reduced by heavy substance use. Additionally, the gardenia in this stanza is resemblant of the big white flowers that Billie Holiday always pinned to her, becoming her trademark look. Gardenias are bright, pretty, sweet-smelling flowers, a strong juxtaposition to “that ruined face”. The flower resembles purity and light, contrasting with Billie Holiday’s calloused, hard face that had not known much purity or happiness in youth. Dove’s continuous use of fire and light as a theme of the first stanza creates an ephemeral and slightly melancholy tone, producing an image of something like a flickering candle on the verge of burning out.
The first few lines of the poem are talking about being unapologetic and proud of who you are. It is telling the reader to keep their chin held high. The poem starts describing a girl who is determined to stand out from the crowd and be who she wants to be. In the fifth stanza it talks about not doing doing something just because someone else wants you too and how you should not just do things to please others. Next it talks about the idea of freedom that she brings with her wherever she goes and how it inspires everyone around her. It also talks about her not giving up without a fight. She has learned from her experiences and they have made her stronger. She elevates herself to a point where everyone knows about her, and it would be very hard to forget her. No matter what she will keep fighting for what she believes in, freedom. People do not have a choice but to listen to what she has to say. She is one thing, but she affects many people’s lives in such a way that she becomes a part of them. In the title of the poem it refers to “lady freedom” which is another way of saying lady liberty. As lady liberty, she is a symbol of freedom for many. The Statue of Liberty's torch lights the way to freedom showing us the path to liberty. This is very well represented by the persona of the main character in the poem.
I agree completely with your views on the poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” because I seemed to write some of the same points. You brought it to my attention that you wrote about this character, this girl that is the main idea of the poem. You wrote that she is “determined to stand out from the crowd and be who she wants to be”. I agree with this as well because Dove writes, “with her old fashioned sandals with her leaden skirts with her stained cheeks and whiskers and heaped up trinkets she has risen among us in blunt reproach”. Do you think Dove is trying to tell us that this character has been looked down upon as this this person that has had no rankings and is not worth more than a dime and seems to become bigger than anyone has ever expected?
This poem has prevalent themes of racial discrimination, class, and wealth. This poem in the first stanza, describes a group of people that are civilized ("shoes shines, each starched cuff unyielding, each dove gray pleated trouser leg...") but maybe aren't seen as being civilized even if they have the same qualities as everyone else around them. In the last stanza discusses the reality of their situation in society which is a struggle and is complete poverty. This situation that they are in is 'intolerable'. Later it states that the worst thing is to do nothing to improve their situation. I thought this was interesting because it related to a lot of the ideals of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a civil rights activist that fought for the rights of African-Americans. He articulated concepts of race pride and black nationalism and promoted black to "cast off the shackles of racism by any means necessary", including violence.
I definitely agree about the prominent themes of class and racial discrimination within the piece. Fitting well with the civil rights theme, talking of the porous situation into which many, especially African Americans, were born at the time stresses the role this discrimination played. However, I also feel that it goes beyond this, that it actually transcends simple racial discrimination to talk of taking action on the matter. The line, "Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse is to sit here and do nothing," summarizes this well. The main point of the piece, I would argue, is not simply discrimination but a call to action in combat of this discrimination. Playing off other pieces such as "Rosa," the talk of civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X suits this idea well, and "The situation is intolerable" utilizes this to a great extent.
The poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” by Rita Dove is exactly what the title entails. The entirety of the poem is talking about how we all have this fighter inside of us. Whether that be that we are fighting for freedom or we are fighting for what we believe in, we are fighting and we are not backing down. In the beginning of the poem it talks to us about how we shouldn’t be afraid of who we are and that we should take pride in what we do. For example, Dove writes, “don’t lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going”. This tells us that we should not be afraid of what goals we set and what directions we take in life, for it is our life and we have the right to control it the way we want. Hence the theme in these poems being generalized with Civil Rights. Towards the end of the poem in the second to last stanza, Dove writes, “don’t think you can ever forget her don’t even try she’s not going to budge”. This quote explains to us, the readers, that we all have this fight within us, this drive, to become the best person in our life, to fight for the things we believe in and defend it at all costs, because no matter how hard you work to change your mind on something, it will not move from it’s original spot. Also, the title of the poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” tells us that Lady Freedom may represent Lady Liberty, which is a big sign to many of freedom and hope. This might also be interpreted that this poem is about the natural freedom is a thing that everyone in this country deserves to own. Sometimes there are instances that this may be taken away but only if this situation calls for it because said owner used it irresponsibly. And with Lady Liberty’s torch lighting the way for many and guiding us towards a future of brightness and hope, it also is relevant in this poem with the main character and her persona of not giving in or letting someone pick and choose her fights that she wants to win.
I also thought that the structure of this poem was really interesting, not just because of the weird stanzas but also because something I noticed is that nothing in this poem is capitalized. Going off of your analysis, perhaps the reason that nothing is capitalized is because the person telling this story, almost refuses to conform to society, and not capitalizing the words in the poem is a subtle way to showing that. That she is free do what she wants, that she deserves the same rights as anyone else. I totally agree with the idea that Lady Freedom represents Lady Liberty, and that this poem is trying to say that, there is still hope. There is still hope that things can change, and that everyone can get the civil rights that they deserve, and have those natural rights or freedoms as you mentioned. And that there is no stopping what she wants to do because she has that hope for a brighter future.
In the ‘poem’ Rosa by Rita Dove, history is mixed with admiration to blend together ideas of the past with ideas of the present. The piece comes from the story of Rosa Parks, the famed civil rights activist, and tells of attributes describing “How she sat there,” setting the scene of her famous refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white man. It continues to describe, in an admiring tone, her modest nature yet firm attitude, the “courtesy” she possessed, the “clean flame of her gaze” taken by a photograph. In doing so, Dove seeks to continue the awareness and legend, of sorts, pertaining to Parks, tying together her activist nature with those ideas of civil unrest in present times. Writing in a flattering manner of Rosa only serves to continue her presence for future generations, ensuring the knowledge of her events will spread to future generations. As a result, anyone who picks up this poem and dives into its content will soon learn of Rosa, fulfilling Dove’s goal of passing Parks’ legacy down to the next generation.
This is all welcome and joyous, yet one wonders as to whether or not this ‘poem’ truly is constructed and delivered in such a way that its content will actually be conveyed. After all, it’s 12 lines, many of which are less than a simple declarative statement. Is this truly fair to the legacy of Rosa? Is this the idea that people should have of her, one of coats, a clean gaze, and her purse, not one of her passion, her perseverance, her drive in the face of opposition? At the same time, one can argue that the piece barely constitutes a literary construction fit to pass throughout those generations. There is a case to made for brevity, by all means, but the style is so simple, I would argue that the presentation of this side-by-side with a poem tossed together by a student of literature would bear almost no difference between the two. On the contrary, actually, one could say the literature student’s piece would present itself with more content, depth, and usage of devices. And this all forgoes the fact that Rosa possesses no rhyme pattern, yet unlike many of Dove’s other pieces such as her Mother Love sonnets, there appears to be no purpose to the lack of a scheme. Even the enjambment loans little to the rhyme pattern, perhaps aiming more to look like a poem than service as one.
All in all, Dove’s piece possesses a noble purpose, yet there is much criticism to be had as to its methodology and final product.
In her poem "Freedom Ride", Rita Dove incorporates bus imagery into her poem, using phrases like "Pull the cord a stop too soon", "Pick any stop", and "but where you sit is where you'll be when the fire hits" to make the reader understand the situation of segregated bus rides during the Civil Rights era in a creative way. Dove explains to the reader that being a person of color on a bus was extremely terrible with the repeated use of fire diction in the last two lines of every stanza in the poem. This use of fire diction can represent how blacks were "under fire" during these times and how many thought that there will be no hope for a bright future with the lines "But there's just more cloud cover, and germy air, condensing on the tinted glass,.." (6-8) and "at every corner the same scorched brick, darkened windows" (21-22). The reader can also assume that those sitting at the back of the bus found despair when it came to segregated buses with the lines "you'll find yourself walking a gauntlet of stares" (13-14). A gauntlet is a piece of armor a knight wears to cover and protect their wrist, so I interpreted this line as though colored people have had thick skin when dealing with oppression, people will still give them looks and stares because of the color of their skin if in the wrong neighborhood, hence the mention of a gauntlet.
I also thought it was interesting that Dove included bus-related motifs in the poem to supplement the overall “scene” of the poem. After all, the Freedom Riders’ movement and bus boycotts encompassed much of the points and details explained in the poem. I liked how you included the significance of the fire motif in this poem, as it is also present in many other of the “Civil Rights” poems by Rita Dove, such as in “Rosa”, which describes Rosa Parks and her historically famed bus ride. The third stanza, “Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash”, contained an example of Dove’s fire motif in another piece of her writing. The “clean flame” symbolized the powerful unwavering movement of her gaze and served as a connotation of how Rosa was a “spark” for the union and bus boycotting.
A poem that really stuck out to me in this collection of poems was “The situation is intolerable”. This poem talks about the many different aspects of racism and general racial tension in the United States and characterizes it as intolerable. The poem appears to be like a call to action, almost, “Our situation is intolerable, but what’s worse is to sit here and do nothing,”(19-20). Dove is saying that yes, this situation that they are in, with all the racial tension of the civil rights movement is intolerable, and that something must be done in order for everything to be fixed. That you can't just sit around and hope for everything to figure itself out. Another thing that really stuck out about this poem is the title, it is in quotation marks. At first I had thought that it was a quote that someone may have said, and so I looked it up and found nothing, which made the choice of putting quotations around the title very interesting. The fact that there are quotations around the title gives off the feeling or impression that someone is speaking, so someone could be saying that the situation is intolerable. Considering that this is about civil rights there can be two approaches as to the perspective of the poem and who is saying the title. And the one that makes the most sense in terms of the poem is it is from the perspective of a black person who is describing all the inequalities and the struggles of poverty, and is responding to the person who is saying, “The situation is intolerable.” The person who could be saying the title could be a white person who is referring to the black and their movement as intolerable. Almost like saying that their cause is worthless and that it is simply preposterous that black people want the same rights as any other person. And so the poem is a response to that phrase, “Aren’t we civilized, too?”(2). The person responding is talking about how these people who perhaps are not as wealthy, and are looked at by society as uncivilized, but is proposing the idea that they are in fact civilized and should be held to the same standard. That is what the first two stanzas are about. The third stanza mainly focuses on the struggles of poverty, “SO what if we were born up a creek/ and knocked flat with the paddle, if we ain’t got a pot to piss in/ and nowhere to put it if we did?”(15-18). This is followed by the call to action, suggesting that the poverty that they live in and the discrimination that people receive depending on their color or their class is intolerable, and that something must be done about it.
Rita Dove’s “Rosa” divulges and personalizes the impact of Rosa Parks and her protest against racial discrimination through Dove’s utilization of short, declarative sentences and anaphora at the beginning and end of the poem. “Rosa” is comprised of concise, direct lines that accurately describe the story of Rosa Parks. The brusque structure of the poems capture the reader’s attention and convey a more intense mood. Additionally, the more harsh-sounding words contribute to the overall seriousness and lyrical tone of the poem. This is especially evident in the third stanza of the poem: “Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash”. Both “clean”, “carved”, and “camera” begin with harsh, cutting sounds which result in a type of lyricism that mimics alliteration. The imagery invoked by the “clean flame of her gaze” resembles Rosa Park’s stern, icy-hot expression, as if her eyes are burning with the intensity of a white-hot, “clean” flame. The brevity of each of the lines and break between separate different ideas of the retelling distinguish between differences in moods of the stanzas. In Dove’s “Rosa”, the anaphora that takes place in the first lines of the first and last stanzas helps create a feeling of connectedness between the entire poem. The poem begins with, “How she sat there” and ends with “How she stood up”. The repetitive wording add extra emphasis to the importance of her actions and puts a stress on the first and last stanzas, marking them as the most significant in the poem. The change between Rosa sitting and then standing creates movement and finality; in the beginning, Rosa’s actions are unwary and vulnerable. The “place so wrong” describes the state of racial discrimination in the setting and the danger it may pose to those who defy it. However, at the end Rosa is taking a stand up from the bus seat, as well as for herself and for the rights of people of color. The last two lines, “when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.” give Rosa a dominant connotation, as if they are bowing in submission to her and she is deemed more powerful.
background: El General is said to be 'searching for a word' which is 'perejil'-which is an allusion to the resulting massacre. (A general ordered 20,000 hatian blacks to be executed, and had them pronounce the word 'perejil' to determine if they would be executed or not.) This poem was interesting because it was separated into two distinct parts. The words, parrot and cane, were specifically repeated throughout the poem probably as a way to symbolize this event in history. The parrot could be seen as the general who ordered the execution of the haitians. "A parrot imitating spring" could be seen that the general is announcing that a new era is beginning for the country of haiti.
I thought the form was definitely a key part of this. You made a good point by tying in the background, as I always saw the background as a huge portion of the story. Most of the points and lines makes little to no sense without any background knowledge, not that they really make sense in the first place, of course. However, the crux of Parsley is definitely the ties back to its influence, and many of the references to Haitian culture are clear. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of the poem is this, that it wraps itself around its background.
This poem is an allusion to the dictator Rafael Trujillo. He was from the Dominican Republic and he was the commander in chief of the National Army before he became the president. Calling Rafael “El General” could also refer to him time in the military. The parrot that is mentioned throughout the poem is used as a symbol of his wealth because in that time period parrots were pets for the rich. It is also a symbol for spring because of its color, green is typically used to represent spring. The poem also says how “a parrot imitating spring” in second, fourth, and sixth stanza. The poem also talks about how the cane workers are mistreated. The parrot and the swamp are used to contrast the wealth and the poor workers in the fields which creates a very tense mood. The haitian workers being mistreated could be a symbol for the 20,000 haitians that were massacred under the control of Rafael Trujillo. There was also lots of repetition in this poem. The phrase “a parrot imitating spring” was used three times, and the phrase “out of the swamp the cane appears” was used four times. This repetition was used to state the importance of those lines in the poem. “Out of the swamp the cane appears” is an interesting phrase because cane does not actually grow in water, even though it requires a very tropical climate. The swamp could be a metaphor for the struggle and suffering of the workers that were harvesting it.
I agree that the parrot that is frequently mentioned throughout Dove’s “Parsley” is symbolic of spring and new beginning. However, I also believed that the parrot in the repeated phrase, “... a parrot imitating spring” is resemblant of Trujillo. Spring is often a new start or phase, a new era. It’s a hopeful season that comes after a long winter. Raphael Trujillo being the parrot imitating spring is how he believed with the Parsley Massacre he would be commencing a new era in the Dominican Republic, a fresh start without the Haitians. This is displayed in the sixth stanza, “... in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming. And we lie down. For every drop of blood there is a parrot imitating spring. Out of the swamp the cane appears.” The drops of blood in this stanza represent every Haitian death that came by his movement’s hand. For every murder, Trujillo is building his version of a “fresh start”, his “spring” after a long winter.
Parsley was a very interesting poem I must say. Knowing the context of the situation really helped to fully understand what was going on. In the first part of Parsley, The Cane Fields, it shows us the perspective of the workers, the ones being tortured and killed. Two lines are repeated over and over that really catch my attention. The first one being, “Out of the swamp the cane appears…” and the other being, “A parrot imitating spring”. The first line about the cane is followed by is “Out of the swamp the cane appears/ to haunt us” but there’s a line break so I didn’t catch it the first time. The last one says “The cane appears in our dreams”, from these two examples it feels like to the slaves the cane is always around them, it haunts them, there’s no escaping the cane or the pain that the cane brings, not even in their dreams can they escape the pain. Moving on to the other repeating quote is the parrot, I don’t know why I see it this way but to me the slave just keeps hearing that word over and over again it’s like an annoying parrot that just keeps saying “Perejil”, so maybe the parrot is supposed to be El General Trujillo in a way. In the next part, we see it more from Trujillo’s perspective. Apparently, he lost his mother and he’s been in war and seen soldiers die in front of him. I feel that he’s seen a great deal of death and tragically lost his mother and felt loss and pain and sorrow, I can see this now that he’s been through a lot in his life, yet is that an excuse to kill tens of thousand of innocent Haitian slaves, no. Well, that’s the way I see the poem, I can’t wait to discuss this in class and hear what the others have to say!
I agree with your stance on the fact that the poem was in fact an interesting one and I also agree that the you saw the two parts of the poem as well, the first poem being about the workers and the second part being from Trujillo’s perspective. Like I wrote in my blog post I agreed that the workers in the first part were being described as being tortured and in pain from the abuse that these workers were receiving. I also agree that in the second part Trujillo is upset because he has lost his mother that fall and has dealt with a lot of death recently from being at the palace to being out on the battlefront and seeing his soldiers die in front of his very own feet.
“Parsley” by Rita Dove I know was not just confusing for me, for it has been confusing for all of us as well. I am going to have to be honest here, this poem was my least favorite so far out of all of Rita Dove’s poems because it leaves us the reader at such a crossroad. We can take it in so many different directions and several interpretations that ]may leave us with a headache rather than a complete understanding of the poem and its entirety. I saw this poem as two different parts. The first part titled, “The Cane Fields” and the second part titled, “The Palace”. The first part is from the point of view from the Haitian workers and their gruelling lives and how they are treated by The General, who is in theory the main focus of the second part of the poem. As it says in the excerpt from “The Farming of Bones”, “His face was buried in a puddle of green spew. He was not moving. Someone threw a bucketful of water at the back of his head.” which correlates to the quote from Dove’s poem, “we down screaming as rain punches through and we come up green.” The rain signifying the water and the green signifying the green parsley. This shows us that these workers and farmers were not treated very well and these were interpreted as the pain and fear that they had to endure. Dove also repeat a lot of the same lines in the first part of the poem including, “Like a parrot imitating spring.” The parrot seems to signify a time where things were happier in the spring and they were better for the workers and they were treated well. But now it is fall like it says in the second part of the poem, and this is the time the General’s mother dies. The parrot can also signify a sense of hope and the mother itself because when the mother was around, when it was spring, everything was all sunshine and rainbows and then fall had come and the mother had died and fall has begun.
I completely agree with your statement that this poem was confusing, I had to read it multiple times until I could get a feel as to what it was trying to get at. And I think this is noticeable as I read through these comments that there is a pretty wide variety of interpretation of this poem. I agree with your statement about how the first part is from the perspective of a Haitian worker, and that the second part is from the point of view of the General. I was very confused about the second part of this poem, just because it seemed kind of all over the place, but your blog post actually helped clear it up a bit!
The poem “Parsley” by Rita Dove sure is an interesting one. This poem seemed different than many of the other poems that we have read by Dove. I think that this poem is a great example of why Rita Dove is so highly acclaimed. She brings light to a lot of topics that many not have even heard of. Obviously Dove is very well educated and is very well educated on a variety of topics. To be completely honest, I did not know very much about this topic when I had first read the poem, I had read the reading that came along with the poem and did even more research on my own until the poem made a little more sense. This poem is an allusion to a genocide and massacre of many people lead by Rafael Trujillo. The poem is split into two parts, and either this poem is a little too straightforward or there is a lot more that I was simply not getting And there is so much to talk about in this poem, but I will be going over the first part. The first part of this poem, “The Cane Fields” there was a lot of anaphora used. Phrases like “There is a parrot imitating spring” as well as “Out of the swamp the cane appears” are repeated multiple times throughout the first part. The parrot in this case is a symbol for money or wealth in a sense, birds usually represent flight, which represents freedom, and then the swamp can represent suffocation, almost. This is juxtaposition and has an affect on the reader as they can compare those who were killed because they couldn't pronounce the word parsley correctly, versus those who were free from that and were able to escape being killed. The word cane is also used very interestingly, cane is a pun in this poem because it represents two things. The title of this first part is “The Cane Fields” which would allude to sugar cane fields, but this is using the word cane in a violent manner, which could represent how these people would get beat up if they could not pronounce the word parsley properly, “We cannot speak and R-/ out of the swamp, the cane appears,” (8-9). Overall this poem shows the true violence of these atrocities committed on these people over something that is, quite frankly, very stupid, for lack of a better word.
Prior to my reading tonight, I truly thought that I had reached the pinnacle of Rita Dove’s inherent lack of poetic nature and credibility. I truly believed that there was nothing that woman could throw at me that could make me lose more faith in her works. And yet, here I am, writing once again about how her pieces fail to carry any trait of poetry, any redeeming factor to expand and continue the everlasting human ideal of art. Here I am, writing about Parsley. Parsley starts by exacerbating one of the worst qualities of Dove’s work: a necessity for context. While the ‘poem,’ frankly, makes no sense anyways, it makes even less so without a great briefing on background prior to its reading. A “proper” understanding and reading is only made possible by background into the influences of the piece, as well as its actual plot. That’s right: the work actually requires another work to even function. This is, in reality, just an expansion pack to another work, simply another patch to the metaphorical gaming content provided in the vanilla version. By limiting the work like this, Dove innately cuts off an enormous chunk of her audience, as people with no background (a.k.a. most people) will be completely unable to grasp anything from it. Dove limits the damage, though, by ensuring the piece is not even worth grasping. Another wandering series of words, Parsley has virtually no redeeming qualities in its writing. It uses pointless literary devices and empty grasps at symbolism (a la the parrot), not to mention vague and out of place references to Australia, simply to construct a piece her publisher would put out, one that looks like it means something when it actually doesn’t. And that’s another thing! This is another example of what I like to call “mid-sentence enter format,” whereby the author seems to have accidentally hit the “enter” key and skipped down a line for no reason. This comes with the endless and meaningless enjambments (“He is all the world/there is”), not to mention breaks that wander about, providing nothing but extra “form” to the poem (“The parrot/ who has traveled all the way from Australia”). The format of hitting enter is rampant among almost all of Dove’s work, and it’s perhaps the most excruciating factor. It seems almost as though Dove banks completely on looking like poetry while failing to develop it into poetry. In the grand scheme of things, we can measure poetry by looking at 4 spheres: Individuality, Literary Styling, Structure, and Audience-- ILSA, if you will. Parsley fails on each front. It is totally dependent upon another story and is wholly non-unique, failing the Individuality test. It lacks purpose in its literary devices, and its usage of techniques does not advance the text, hence it fails Literary Styling. Its structure is wandering, confusing, and lacks key components like rhyme, proper spacing, and rhythm. Perhaps most importantly, its audience is incredibly limited and it makes no effort to extract interest, draining it of any score here. Parsley is inherently flawed, and instead of lauding it, perhaps we should look critically and learn what not to do, how to create poetry with a purpose, and where to go from here in the future of literature, because boy, does it seem like we took a step back.
The poem "Parsley" by Rita Dove, aka, the only poem in the Politics of History section is truly one to be remembered. I have to admit though, if a reader was trying to read the poem without any background knowledge they would have struggles. If a reader DID read the poem with some background knowledge.. They would still have struggles, take me as an example of that. The excerpt from, The Farming of Bones shows the struggles of Odette trying to say a simple but deadly word: "Perejil." "... even though the trill of the r and the precision of the j was sometimes too burdensome a joining for my tongue... I could have said it. But I didn't get my chance." this struggle of trying to pronounce the constant change of the word 'Parsley' could be seen repeatedly throughout the both "The Cane Fields" and "The Palace." I think that Dove continues to use that struggle to show just how drastic of a genocide this truly was in an overlooked part of history. How unnecessary it was for Rafael Trujillo to kill people over "a single, beautiful word," and showing how monstrous people found their entertainment back then. The word was changed and manipulated many times, from Katalina to Perejil to Parsley, but the outcomes were still the very same. If the Haitian workers couldn't pronounce the word, they simply died. Much like the parrot trying to imitate spring, the bird is trying to be something so beautiful and full of life, just like the season, but it is instead stuck inside a cage of a wealthy palace. In this case we can try to compare the parrot to the Haitian workers, who long for something more, but are instead stuck inside a cage of enslavement. The parrot was also characterized as being green with a black tongue, which can represent the contrast of it's outward beauty, green: full of life and wealth and nature, to a black lifeless soul on the inside. But, because the parrot and roll it's Rs (to which I personally cannot, so I found this poem kind of relatable), Trujillo kept the bird alive and well. The General treated that bird with more respect than the Haitians which means that the parrot, although he is made to be more human through Trujillo's care, it parallels the tragic and enslaved life of a Haitian working in a cane field.
“Parsley” by Rita Dove describes the Parsley Massacre that took place in 1937 in the Dominican Republic. The Parsley Massacre was the mass genocidal murder of the Haitian population in the Dominican Republic that was led by Dominican President Rafael Trujillo. The first part of the poem, “The Cane Fields”, consists of a Haitian point of view. In this section, I thought it was interesting that Trujillo is described as “El General” even though he was commonly nicknamed “El Jefe”, which means “chief”. The term “general” is more commanding and military-like, while chief can portray a “leader or ruler of people or a clan.” This can be due to Trujillo having a more fearful and authoritative hand over the Haitians, as well as represent the Haitians’ inability to pronounce the silent “j” the same way as the native Dominicans. In “The Cane Fields”, the phrase “out of the swamp the cane appears” is frequently repeated, even used as caesura in a break between sentences, “He laughs, teeth shining out of the swamp. The cane appears…” Although the “cane” may be symbolic of the sugar cane that many Haitians harvested while enslaved, I thought it to be more resemblant of El General and Trujillo himself due to the significantly different time period setting (1740s while the Parsley Massacre was set in 1937). In this case, the cane could portray how the Haitians were subjected to similar feelings of inferiority when treated by Trujillo as when their ancestors harvested cane as slaves. However, I believed that the cane was another representation of Trujillo and his overbearing presence throughout the poem and the massacre. Although a cane or stick can be perceived as support for someone frail, I comprehended it as a symbol of abuse and power, such as when someone is “caned”, or beat.
Many of the poems in this section have a very upbeat and nice vibe, a good contrast from the previous poems. Fox Trot Fridays really stood out to me in this sense, it’s very enjoyable and pleasant to read. The Foxtrot was a very popular dance in the 1930’s, and it is usually paired with upbeat swing music. In the first few lines of the poem, we see Friday's are the days where you don’t have to think about anything else you can, “tuck in/ the grief, lift your pearls, and/ stride brush stride”, all you have to do is dance. The “quick-quick with a/ heel ball toe,” makes it almost feel like I'm watching someone dancing, or dancing myself. I like the allusion to Nat King Cole and the simile of his “slow satin smile”. Nat King Cole was a jazz singer from the 1940’s, I’ve listened to his music before and it has a nice and smooth feel to it, not to mention, he has a great smile. The “one man and/ one woman,/rib to rib,/with no heartbreak in sight” line is showing the connection that the dance creates between the two parties and the joy it brings. The final lines create the image of the atmosphere that the dance and music create, “the sweep of paradise and the space of a song/ to count all the wonders in it.” The Foxtrot was an escape from reality and the space was wonderful.
This set of poems was very different from the rest of Rita Dove's poems, and that was really nice and refreshing. These poems, were much happier, and many seemed a lot more rhythmic than the rest of the poems that we have read in class. My favorite of these poems was “American Smooth”. This poem shows two people who are dancing in a romantic sense and describes the feeling of becoming lost in a dance. Dove uses oxymorons to show how through dancing you can let go a little bit, “...such perfect agony/one learns to smile through”(10-11) as well as with, “ecstatic mimicry /being the sine qua non/ of American Smooth,” (12-14). At first I was confused as to what sine qua non meant, and so I looked it up, and it means something that is absolutely necessary. What I thought this meant was that in order to dance these types of dances that there is a journey, that you go through essentially, with these dances. Dove compares the feeling of dancing to flying, “I didn’t notice/ how still you’d become until/ we had done it/… achieved flight,” (22-26). That feeling of simply letting go in can be achieved through dancing, and the feeling of flying can be achieved, as you loose yourself, and glide across the dance floor. This sense of flight through dance is depicted in some of the other poems in this collection, like “Ta Ta Cha Cha”. And once you are done dancing that feeling of flight, of being something more than just human, no longer exists, “before the earth/ remembered who we were/ and brought us down,” (29-31).
I definitely agree, the tone shift between this set and others remains quite visible. It's a good change of tone, of course, and it comments on Dove's ability to address a number of unique topics. This is one of the most redeeming qualities of her work (though I cannot say there are many...): her willingness to expand her writing horizons and explore what is out there. Her conveyance of flight and dancing present a freeing feel for the pieces, especially withing "American Smooth," and this can be reflected in many ways. The poem's features and qualities are more noticeable, the piece itself has more drawing interest in readers, and it remains one of Dove's most known pieces as a result. Perhaps if Dove modeled more work after "American Smooth" and friends, her collection could spread further and be more sound poetically.
I have to say that these poems in the American Smooth are much more upbeat and happier than the ones that we have read from Rita Dove prior. The one that really stood out to me from this group of poems was Fox Trot Fridays, which was in fact a popular dance back in the 1930’s that can be described as a smooth, progressive waltz and is still popular in today’s world. The poem itself is incredibly upbeat and cheerful compared to her other poems that we have read in class. This poem kind of tells us that this dance is an escape for people to get away from all the pain in their lives. For example Dove writes, “Thank the stars there’s a day each week to tuck in the grief, lift your pearls, and stride brush stride”. This explains that this dance can take all the worries away from what we feel in our everyday’s life and can make all the problems in the world disappear. This one day that everyone looks forward to at the end of their week, makes all the difference in their lives for the long run even though it is just one dance on one day of the week. They feel as though they are invincible and nothing can touch them. Dove writes, “rib to rib, with no heartbreak in sight”. This tells us that nothing can do any harm to these people during this dance. I can relate this to an athlete playing the sport they love or a musician playing the instrument they love. We all have that one thing that we can not physically live without or we have nothing to our name. We are all just lonely people in this world and we need something to entertain us so that we can actually start living the lives we deserve to live.
I really like your analysis of this poem. I thought that the upbeat tone of these poems was a great contrast to the other poems we have read in her class. One thing I had noticed about this poem in particular, and some of the other poems in this series, is that its very rhythmic. As I was reading it, I decided to read it out loud, and it had a certain meter to it, it sounded lyrical almost. It sounds almost smooth, and jazz like, which I think matches this poem perfectly as that is the type of music that foxtrots are danced to. Similarly, another thing I noticed was the structure of this poem. Each stanza is made up of couplets, except for the last one. I thought that it was to have the effect of two people dancing. What do you think?
Although a vixen is typically just a female fox, it can also refer to a sexually attractive woman, which Rita Dove’s poem, “Fox”, describes. “Fox” has a similar title to Dove’s “Foxtrot Fridays”, but that’s where most similarities end. The foxtrot— a sweet, smooth, waltz-like dance contrasts greatly with a glamorous and sultry vixen. The appearance of “Fox” is curvy and smooth, resemblant of a woman’s body or a fox’s lush tail. This adds to the effect of the poem’s title and helps in creating visual imagery. “Fox” consists of two stanzas similar to each other in terms of Rita Dove’s use of enjambment and anaphora. Each stanza is made up of two sentences. The two sentences of both stanzas begin with “She…”, such as in the first stanza, “She loved what / she was, there / for the taking, / imagine.” and the second, “She loved / nothing more / than what she had / which was enough / for her, / which was more / than any man / could handle.” When first reading the poem and comparing the two stanzas, I believed that the second part was more negative than the first one, which seemed hopeful and positive in comparison. This feeling of hopefulness is evident in the first sentence, “She knew what / she was and so / was capable / of anything / anyone / could imagine.” The fox (vixen) is confident and optimistic— she is capable of anything and everything possible. I assumed that the following stanza was less inspiring, especially because of the first sentence, “She imagined / nothing.” However, this second half of the poem isn’t as condemning and negative as it first appears. Although “imagining nothing” can seem bleak, it may also mean that the woman’s mind is clear and calm. She’s not expectant of anything or anyone, and is simply at peace with herself. The second sentence, “She loved / nothing more / than what she had, / which was enough / for her, / which was more / than any man / could handle.” describes the woman’s peacefulness and contentedness in her own skin and state-of-mind. Her possessions and expectations don’t cause her unhappiness or make her want to crave more, and she doesn’t feel as though she has to settle or change herself for a man to be satisfied. In Dove’s “Fox”, the subject is a strong, confident woman who understands and appreciates herself and her own worth.
Human history is a history of progress, of creation, of ingenuity. It is a history of art, of language, of beauty. It is a history of poetry, of meanings within words. But within that, it is a history of rhyme. Rhyme within poetry is, well, a poetic thing. It can transfix you, its sense and wave of rhythm unfound through other methods. Within the past of the art, it lurks within every nook and cranny. Whether it be the works of Poe (Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary), the art of Whitman (Exult O shores, and rings O bells!/ But I with mournful tread/ Walk the deck my Captain lies/ Fallen cold and dead), or even the musings of Theodore Geisel (I do not like green eggs and ham/ I do not like them, Sam I Am), rhyme is integral to form, rhythm, and our idea of poetry. So why does Rita Dove hate it with such a passion? Her work exists as, apparently, just a mixture of spaces and lines, bereft of the rhythm that awarded poetry such an audience, such a response over time. She attacks it with an almost insatiable fury, refusing to rhyme almost all of her works, never yielding to our construct of what poems should be. But why? This only weakens her poems. Less people read it, less people understand it, less people emulate it. Is this not the exact opposite of what a poet seeks? Perhaps the most excruciating part is not that she does not rhyme; rather, it is that she easily could. The poem Quick is an excellent example. Dove has split the work into multiple parts, groups of 2 lines, with 1 single line at the end. We can examine this, therefore, by these groups, and see just how well rhyme would apply. The couplet “Now he peers from the culvert/ all bobble and twitch, vacant eyes” is a great starting point! Why not “Upon the culvert, now he peers/ Bobble and twitch, vacant eyes, great fears”? Or perhaps “From the culvert, now he sees/ Bobble and twitch, appearing to freeze”? Trivial changes, albeit, but the point remains. The lack of rhyme services nothing but to make work easier for Dove. It requires less effort, less thought, and less overall heart imbued into the work. We should hold this as a great criticism of her. Within works like Quick, the point is less clear. The storyline, the setting, and all the other elements are left near invisible, least of all attractive, to the general audience. What poet should be rewarded for surviving on this?
The House Slave by Rita Dove gives the reader a glimpse into the world of house slaves, and their experiences. It is told from the perspective of a house slave, they tell us of the daily struggle and sadness of the house slave. The poem starts with the image of “The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass and in the slave quarters there is a rustling—” The slaves are woken up by horns very early in the morning, the dew is still on the grass from the night before, and the slaves are getting ready to go to work in the fields. The next part uses simile, “I watch them driven into the vague before-dawn while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick”. The simile of the mistress sleeping like and ivory toothpick is showing the high wealth and prosperity of the rich white master and his mistress, and it shows she can sleep soundly and not have to worry about what tomorrow holds for her, unlike the slaves. Sleep is very significant and is brought up many times throughout the poem. The next stanza writes, “and Massa dreams of asses, rum and slave-funk. I cannot fall asleep again.”. Similar to the mistress, the master doesn’t have to worry about what tomorrow holds, he sleeps well, dreaming of all the luxuries of being a rich, white, slave owner. And yet, the speaker of the poem, still cannot sleep, she’s too worried about what the future holds. Dove writes, “At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards—sometimes my sister’s voice, unmistaken, among them. “Oh! pray,” she cries. “Oh! pray!” The speaker is saddened by the abuse that the field slaves receive, she hears her sister being abused and can do nothing to stop it. The end of the poem writes, “I weep. It is not yet daylight.”. The house slave feels so helpless that all she can do is cry, and still she cannot find sleep.
In the poem “Fox Trot Fridays”, Rita Dove uses many allusions. More than one of the allusions is to a type of dance. The structure of the poem suggests a waltz tempo; the two line stanzas being the up beats and the break in between being the down. She also references a dance that is most likely the fox trot in the lines, “quick-quick with a heel-ball-toe.” There was also a dance allusion in the stanza before that saying “stride brush stride”. She included lots of dance imagery because in her personal life she and her husband were ballroom dancers and it was something she loved to do. Another allusion was to Nat King Cole who was an American singer who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist in the 50's. There are also three biblical allusions in the poem in the sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas. The first one is “one man and one women,” which is a reference to Adam and Eve. In the line, “just the sweep of Paradise”, paradise could be a reference to the garden of Eden. The other biblical reference is “rib to rib” because a women is supposedly made from a man’s rib bone. These biblical references were probably included because they are things many people have heard of or can relate to.
The poem "David Walker (1785-1830)" tells the tell of an African American abolitionist (a person that advocates for the ending to slavery) by the name of David Walker, hence the title. The reader will immediately notice the years put next to Walker's name, making an assumption that it was the year of his birth and of his death. But, when an astute reader looks up David Walker, they can see that he was born in the year 1796, not 1785. He did however, die in the year 1830, which must mean that there must be some correlation between slavery in the year 1785 (a significance that I personally have not found the answer to) and the year of David Walker's death.
In the first stanza, Dove mentions that he was "free to travel." David Walker's father was a slave while his mother was free, deeming him free as well. Though he was free from the inhumane acts of slavery, he still made an impressive impact in the abolitionist movement, the poem portraying his influence through Dove's use of italicized text, which, if you take separately, seems to be coming from the POV of David Walker himself, the majority of the text being his powerful and blunt abolitionist statements. We can see society's reaction to his statements right after a few of the italicized text, their opinions being very against his ideas of equality. "Outrage. Incredulity. Uproar in state legislatures."and "The jeweled canaries in the lecture halls tittered (a short, half-suppressed laugh).."
The first two stanzas speak of Walker's everyday life, using visual imagery to convey a sort overwhelming feeling by throwing a whole bunch of objects into the stanzas like the compass needles, the ceiling fans, coat linings of itinerant seamen, jackets, and pamphlets. This gives the reader a direct view from the eyes of Walker himself, making us feel like being an African American abolitionist, or an abolitionist in general, is a hard duty to pull off with the constant overwhelming negativity that is put upon them.
I agree with your first statement about how the year 1785 must mean something that is related to slavery itself rather than David Walker’s life span. In my opinion I think it was the start of when slavery was starting to grow bigger and bigger in America and also when slaves started to believe that there was some type of way out to where they could earn their freedom. And like you said, David Walker was granted freedom because his mother was not a slave which meant that there was a way out and many more that they do not yet know about. So I agree with your argument to how it is quite confusing why they mentioned 1785 and not 1796, when he was born. But if I did have a theory it would be quite similar to your blog post.
Now we take a break from the happy, relaxing poems that Dove writes in American Smooth and flashback to a period that is not so happy to talk about, Slavery. “The House Slave” by Rita Dove is an example of the sadness and the horrific actions that took place during these times in our history. The poem is from a point of view of a slave that is working for his/her master and mistress. The poem itself is kind of depressing to hear about something that we couldn’t have experienced and it is unbelievable that one human can treat another human this way. For example, Dove writes, “At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards”. Laggards means someone who falls behind and makes slow progress. Basically this explains to us that the slaves that were not up and working by the second horn were being whipped by their master. These were the consequences that colored people had to face during the time period and it would have been traumatizing to see a loved one or a close friend that they have been working along side for days or weeks is being treated unfairly by these people that are no different from them other than their skin color. Although this poem is from a slave's perspective, it does have a negative tone to it. Dove writes, “It is not daylight yet”. I feel as if the daylight is a symbol for freedom for the slaves, and the narrator believes that freedom has not yet come. But you see, the keyword is yet. This narrator is holding some type of hope to say this to where there is freedom ahead of them and in their near futures’. As this slave sees the other slaves being whipped it just flares this hope inside of them even more, so as the hope builds and builds, these slaves have something that they will look forward to. Even though their masters don’t treat them right, freedom will come and they will not have to be treated this way anymore.
In the poem “The House Slave,” Rita Dove uses perspective and descriptive imagery to convey the experience of a slave. Perhaps the biggest emotional facet of this piece lies within the use of the term “I.” This establishes the perspective as first-person, allowing readers into the eyes and mind of a house slave from back in time. The line, “I weep,” carries much emotion because of this, and its unique peek into the mind of a slave embodies itself as such. Carrying this perspective possesses much value to readers, as seeing how few people from today were alive in the time of slavery-- some would say no one is, even-- this has much impact in the minds of readers. Often, we cannot fully consider these perspectives because of our lack of empathy and understanding; in turn, providing this perspective is crucial to our thought and understanding of the past. The descriptive imagery works hand-in-hand with this, as the conveyance of the scene is crucial to conveying the understanding. Using terms like “vague before-dawn” and “fields unfold to whiteness” places readers fully in the shoes of the narrator, enabling the empathy within readers to unfurl. The two of these devices are mutually dependent. Without imagery, it is unlikely the perspective would matter as much. Without perspective, the imagery would lead to no empathy. Discovering this relationship is key to seeing how woven together the devices and choices Dove made within “The House Slave” are. In doing so, we can fully view the impact of this poem and begin to dissect exactly what makes it that way.
I totally agree that with your analysis of this poem in terms of the impact that it has. I think all the poems in this section were written for the sole purpose of educating and making people aware of the things that went on during these times in American history, as they point out a lot of atrocities that were committed against these people, but some also allow for a sense of hope, like in "Belinda's Petition". There is a lot of visual imagery in this poem that makes the reader sympathize with the slaves in this poem. I thought that the most impactful line of this poem was the last one, "I weep. It is not yet daylight". It shows how hopeless these people were, and how they have already had to endure a lot and the day hasn't even began.
In Rita Dove’s “The Abduction”, Dove describes the life of freed man Solomon Northup, specifically the events where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. There are five stanzas in the poem, each decreasing a line every stanza, so it is a quintet followed by a quatrain, triplet, couplet, and a single line at the end. Along with the stanzas growing progressively shorter as the poem continues, the subject becomes more grim and loses the initial cheerful tone. In the first stanza, Solomon Northup is jubilant and excited; he believed he was going to join his friends and make good money working with them. “The bells, the cannons, the houses black with crepe, / all for the great Harrison! / The citizenry of Washington clotted the avenue--I among them, Solomon Northup / from Saratoga Springs, free papers in my pocket, violin / under arm, my new friends Brown and Hamilton by my side.” It’s as if Northup’s excitement is tangible through his long statements, similar to when a person starts speaking in run-on sentences out of their own sheer effervescence. However, by the last line of the poem, the sentence is short and concise, “I woke and found myself alone, in darkness and in chains.” This describes Northup recovering from the drug and realizing that he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Although “in darkness” could just represent the dark environment he had been contained in, the phrase also represents how he was in the dark and unknowing about where he was, why he was there. The fourth stanza also shares the same connotation as the last. “I floated on water I could not drink. Though the pillow / was stone, I climbed no ladders in that sleep.” The second line in the stanza portrays how Northup was stuck on the last rung and as a newly slave, he was unable to advance in the social ladder and become the same person that he had been prior to his kidnapping, freed, professional, and content.
Your point about the stanzas and the role of format stands out as a great comment about the poem. I noticed it as well, while reading, but the initial thing that helped me notice was just the general tone shift. Often, when we read pieces like this, we can feel the change, yet we don't always know what causes it. The form in this poem acts in a very similar way: a subtle change yet one with great impact. Upon further analysis, we can and do recognize and realize the methodology by which these changes are accomplished, and that, within the scope of "The Abduction," is what truly helps the piece flow and feel how it does.
In the poem “The Abduction” by Rita Dove, Dove uses an allusion to Solomon Northup to illustrate his story. Northrup’s story is illustrated most famously by the movie Twelve Years A Slave, he was the son of a freed slave, and so he lived a fairly good life, he too was free and he played the violin, “... Solomon Northrup/ from Saratoga Springs, free papers in my pocket, violin/ under arm…” (3-5). His story continues as he befriends a couple of men, who in turn invite him to a party, and he starts to drink, “I remember how the windows rattled with each report/ Then the wine, like a pink lake, tipped,” (10-11). He has started to feel not very good for he had been drugged, and when he had woken up he was not the same man anymore, “I woke and found myself alone, in darkness and in chains,” (15). When he woke up he was in chains and his life had been turned around, his so called “friends” had turned him in and claimed he was a runaway slave. Due to this, Northrup, a free man, had become a slave for twelve years until he was finally freed again and was then allowed to return home to his family. I noticed that the stanzas kept on growing shorter as it went along, and it become a little more depressing with each one. The first two stanza has a tone of excitement, and then there is a shift in tone with the third stanza. This makes the reader anticipate something bad, and that is exactly what happens. Dove uses her art to communicate many different things, and that is something that can obviously be seen with these poems. She uses allusions to various other slaves, or abolitionists to demonstrate the atrocities commited to them. Especially in the case of Solomon Northrup, who was abducted and then forced to be a slave, only because he kind of resembled a slave who had ran away. It goes to show how the “times were tough”, it shows how horribly they were treated and how little respect they were given. Racism still existed, even if they were free people. It makes the reader think about these things that have happened in American history, and allows us to reflect.
Poem: Used.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem Used, Rita Dove comments on the lack of innocence in society. In the first line, Dove writes, “The conspiracy to make us thin.” This means that society is trying to deprive everyone of depth of character and innocence. After this, Dove begins to comment on the uniformity of society as everyone wants “size threes.” The juxtaposition of man and child to express that children are overexposed and cannot preserve their innocence. Following this, Dove uses the word preadolescent to demonstrate how strange it is for a child to be thinking about the sexuality of women at such a young age. The phrase Tabula rasa is latin for blank slate. The use of latin in this sense shows how the concept of a blank slate was a thing of the past, where currently, a child born into the world is instantaneously being influenced by society and forced into conformity. Frequently throughout the poem, Dove uses the subject pronoun “we.” This both pulls the reader into the issue being outline, and exposes them to the “conspiracy” going on without notice by anyone. Dove writes, “we’ve earned the navels sunk in grief when the last child emptied us of their brief interior light.” Dove uses the word “last” to demonstrate that absolutely no children have “light” or innocence and originality. The navels sunk in grief represent how even an embryo, floating in amniotic fluid, in a place that is perceived as completely safe, is impacted by grief. No one is safe! Dove writes, “Have you ever tried silk sheets? I did…” The sheets represent materialistic values as sleeping on silk sheets is incredibly impractical. The last part of the poem “It’s hard work staying cool” demonstrates how the stress that comes with bearing the pressure of societal conformity is hard on children and also demands a return to the preservation of the innocence of children.
I agree with your analysis that the poem “Used” is just simply another way of saying how children are born into this society bearing so much pressure to conform to the social norms. I even wrote about this in my blog about the poem “Heroes” and I think this theme fits this poem as well. I agree that society in today’s world seems to have one giant spotlight on you at such a young age when we can’t decipher our toes to our fingers, to see how you would handle situations and if you fit into the society well enough. We are born into this world already having to try and fit ourselves to this definite mold that this society has made for everyone, and if you don’t fit then you don’t belong. That’s how things have been and that’s how things will be in the future, unfortunately.
DeleteIn Rita Dove’s indefinable sonnet, “Wiederkehr”, multiple connotations and allusions can be found that relate to the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Some of the definitions given for “wiederkehr” included: return; recurrence; repetition; anniversary. Alluding to the Greek myth, the use of “wiederkehr” in the title can symbolize Persephone’s return to the Underworld and the world above when the seasons change. Also present in the three lines of this poem is an allusion to Dove’s “Persephone, Falling” and Greek myth of Narcissus; “Which is why, when the choice appeared, I reached for it.” In Rita Dove’s “Persephone, Falling”, there was “One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder”. In “Wiederkehr”, Persephone reached for the narcissus, thus condemning half her life to the Underworld and Hades.
ReplyDeleteDove makes multiple allusions to the Greek god Hades, as well as his motives for keeping Persephone in the Underworld. This is evident in lines 8-12; “He merely hoped, in darkness, to smell rain; and though he saw how still I sat to hold the rain untouched inside me, he never asked if I would stay”. The darkness is resemblant of the Underworld which is Hades’s home, as well as his macabre personality. Rain is commonly a symbol of a sign of life in literature; it allows plants to grow, life to sustain, and is a sign of hope in a drought or desert. When Hades sought the untouched rain inside of Persephone, he sought the purity in her heart, her liveliness and hope that was nonexistent in the Underworld. In the first line, Dove writes, “He only wanted me for happiness”; this recognizes how Hades had only captured Persephone for his own pleasure and had neglected any consideration of Persephone’s happiness or state of mind.
In the poem Primer, it talks about a sixth grade girl who gets made fun of and beat up but her mom comes in to save the day. Rita Dove shows both sides of wanting to prove yourself as a kid, the lack of control over your surroundings and the wanting to stand up for yourself. Around this age many kids want to start showing independence from their parents, so when her mom stepped in it was embarrassing and frustrating. The main character wants to be able to fend for herself even when she does not have the ability to. In this case, the character is shown to be powerless by the bullies and by her mother. She even describes her mother as short and the bullies as thin to try and make them seem less threatening. They both have the ability to stop each other with force unlike the main character, who recognizes her weakness. The main character sees power as being able to physically and forcefully defend herself, which is why in the last line she says that she will grow up. She is saying one day she will be powerful enough to prove herself. This adds to her self disappointment because not only did she need her mom to help her but she knows she would have lost if she tried to fight the bullies. In the end she just wants to escape the situation, not even seeing her mother as a helper but as someone else who is more powerful than her.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis of this poem, and unfortunately this is something that a lot of people in school deal with. In many cases, children do not even tell their parents of what is happening when they are being bullied. I think in a way this shows that mother daughter relationship as strong, as the child was confident enough to tell her mother. Although she is a little embarrassed when her mother steps in to save the day, and I think that is something many people can relate to, when you tell your parents something and then they try to fix it or get involved somehow, even when you ask them not too. I thought that the last line of this poem was really interesting, "I'd show them all: I would grow up,"(14). The main character, in a way, seems very vengeful and wants to get revenge on these bullies in a way, and I think the way she decided to do this was to grow up, to be the bigger person.
Deletepoem: Demeter, Waiting
ReplyDeleteThis poem describes the ancient story of Demeter and how she had her daughter, Persephone, taken a way from her to the underworld. This poem is very interesting because it takes on a strong tone of anger and depression, to the point where the narrator describes her pain and strong sense of love that they are willing to stop harvesting the crops, which is shown when the author writes,"I will drag my grief through a winter of my own making and refuse any meadow that recycles itself into hope." . This poem was able to describe the relationship between Demeter and her daughter in a concentrated matter and show that the relationship is a very power thing. Rita Dove most likely used the story within this poem to represent the strong relationship every mother has for their child and to emphasize the importance of a mother-daughter relation.
Poem: Heroes
ReplyDeleteIn the Poem “Heroes” by Rita Dove, tells a short story about a person who picks a wilting flower from an already dying field of flowers and weeds. It then continues on saying that a lady yells at the person for picking the flower, this person then kills the lady and dashes off with the flower. I think the main lesson of this story isn’t the obvious, don’t pick the last flower in a field of wilting flowers or you will have to kill someone and become a criminal that hides for the rest of their lives. I think the main idea is that we personally are the flower. We are one person (flower) in a huge society (field of weeds) that is expecting us to just finally fall over and give into what everyone else is already doing, hence the last flower starting to wilt. We, as people, are so afraid of what people think about us and if we fit into the social norm of today’s society, that we fail to recognize that this only allows us to drift farther and farther from our true self. We put on this fake persona so that we will be liked by others around us. Before we know it we are almost to the point at finally giving in and becoming just like everybody else. The importance of the person picking the last flower is the realization that we don’t need to be like everybody else and that we are unique and different from each other in our own way. The last line of the poem is “Because it was the last one and you knew it was going to die.” tells us, the readers that, society expects us to fall over and give it to them, because that is what everyone else did, and now it was your turn. Expectations are sometimes not worth having, because you never know if there is so much out there.
In the poem "Golden Oldie" by Rita Dove, the author conveys the idea of man’s innate desire for love by showing how overcoming it can be at times. Describing the sensation as resting to “float on a film of sweat,” Dove supports the concept of how man yearns for love within himself, even though, at times, he may never have any. The narrator of the poem continues to say how they lament as to where their lover is, despite not knowing “who my lover might be, or where to start looking.” This quote specifically is impactful, as it shows that, often, people fall less in love with a person and more in love with the idea of being in love. At least, according to Dove, that is. That notion in particular supports the overall theme that man desires love to no end and, often, to no avail. Love, to man, surpasses logic and the present. It is simply a desire, something one will travel to whatever end to satisfy. Dove ties this to how love can overcome a person, with the narrator describing herself as “swaying at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune.” Here, she shows how it can motivate-- or even force-- actions, thoughts, and emotions. All this integrates into the theme and is found within the poem’s internal structure.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem The Narcissus Flower, there is a general sad tone. This poem caught my attention because of the shear complexity. It is something that at first glance is really confusing, but makes a lot of sense once you start to pick it apart. This poem is an allusion to the greek myth about the narcissus . In this myth, there is a man who is so in love with his reflection. There was one line that struck me as interesting, “I found myself at/ the center of a calm so pure, it was hate,” (8-9). This is an oxymoron because usually when you think of the word calm you think of peacefulness which is usually not associated with hate. I feel like this could be an allusion to the myth itself as, this person was so fixated on something in their life that instead of it being something that they loved, it became something that was simply a chore and hateful to do or to look at. In general, since this is from her collection of Mother Love poems, this poem is a mother giving her daughter advise based off of her own experiences, a line that was also very interesting goes as follows, “but the way I could see my own fingers and hear/ myself scream as the blossom incinerated,”(3-4). This provides some visual as well as auditory imagery, but also provides this sort of shift in tone to be more omnious. It is suggested that perhaps that the narrator, the mother in this case, has some sort of personal connection to this flower that was being burned. Flowers usually represent purity, or vulnerability. Perhaps that signifies the mother's innocence of some sort being lost, and she doesn't want her daughter making the same mistake and so she tells her that she can make of her life what she wants, that there is always something more, “you can live beyond dying,” (12). The general advice given in this poem is similar to a theme in Siddhartha, where you can better yourself.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem "The Bistro Styx", we can make the immediate assumption that the poem references Demeter and Persephone as mentioned in earlier class discussions; or to be more broad, the relationship between mother and daughter. We can make this assumption with the word "Styx" in the title, which is part of a Greek Mythology, the River Styx, a deity and a river that connects Earth to the Underworld. The word Bistro originates from France and throughout the poem, Dove uses complex French terms like Parisians (native in Paris), Chateaubriand (type of steak), Camemebert (type of cheese), and lavaliere (a type of jewelry that contains one stone hanging from a necklace; was made popular by a mistress of King Louis XIV of France) to connect mythology to the modern world. In this case a daughter in Paris is slowly losing connections with her mother due to the modern world. This loss of connection can be seen when the daughter continues to talk about food and her career as a subject for art. The mother immediately notices that something has changed about her daughter when she walked into the Bistro wearing all gray. Gray is a color that depicts dull, boring, and depressing things but it can also symbolize things like sophistication, maturity, and formality. The mention of clothes appeared frequently throughout the poem, and the most important thing to note is that when the daughter is talking about her artist, he is wearing all black. Black is a symbolism of death, and when we are comparing this poem to Greek Mythology, we can assume that the artist the daughter is working with is Hades. From there we can assume that the daughter (Persephone) has unfortunately been caught up in the artist's (Hades') life, which is ultimately affecting the relationship between her and her mother (Demeter). After many interrupted conversations, the mother can see that her daughter is never satisfied with anything, so her attention span and her connections to her mother have disappeared entirely, which is why in the end of the poem, the mother finally realizes that she has lost her daughter when she let her out of her grasps and into the real world.
ReplyDeleteThe poem Tou Wan Speaks to Her Husband, Liu Sheng really stood out to me. After a little research, I found that Liu Sheng was the Prince of the Han Dynasty in ancient China, and he and his wife were buried in a tomb which was found in 1968 in Beijing, China. The tomb was dug out of the side of a mountain and had thousands of ancient artifacts inside, and the two bodies were encased in Jade burial suits. After reading the poem again, I had a little bit of a freakout. I realized that this “house” that Tou Wan was building was actually the tomb. I looked at the layout of the tomb and to my surprise, it’s the exact same as in the poem, clearly, this is about the tomb. Many artifacts were referenced too, the “incense burner in the form of the mountains around you, “ is a reference to the Boshan Censer, an incense burner shaped like a mountain, found in the tomb. As well as the Changxin Lamp, a bronze lamp shaped like a maid, “a statue of the palace girl you most frequently coveted”. And of course the Jade Burial suit “to keep the shape of your death”. These were put on to keep the flesh-soul in the body, which was believed to remain in the body for a year after death, that’s what “the privilege to stay alive, a year, together” comes from. The It feels like Tou Wan has a sense of contempt for her husband like she wants him dead. When she says ”the stench of your own diminishing drives you to air (but you will find none)” it's like she wants him to suffer and find no escape. Apparently, she knows about his affairs with other women and is unhappy about it, but there's probably more to that. She wants him to see these his faults and suffer from them in the tomb.
ReplyDeleteI see your points about how this poem reflects that of the Prince of the Han Dynasty, but I also believe that the poem entails that Wan truly loves her husband and thinks that he is of higher power. Dove even writes, “only conqueror” to describe Wan’s husband. Even in the beginning of the poem, for example, Dove tells us, “I will build you a house, of limited chambers, but it shall last forever”. In this quote, Tou Wan compares her love to this house that she will build. It will seem modest, but it will in fact be endless. Tou Wan seems to show her love to her husband throughout the whole poem but I think Dove is trying to tell us something more about romance. During this time period it was not about love, but it was about the woman loving the man and the man not loving the woman back. Because during this time period it was not about love but rather the woman being a servant to the man.
DeletePoem: Nestor’s Bathtub
ReplyDeleteThe poem "Nestor’s Bathtub" by Rita Dove is an interesting tale of sorts. In my opinion the poem the wife of Nestor, King of Pylos, in Greek mythology. The legend goes that Nestor went to fight with the greeks in the Trojan war. While he was gone his wife indulged in many of his expenses and his privileges. One being the bathtub which she loved very much, almost as much as indulging in her husband and making love. Nestor would do all the work and day to day tasks as Dove writes, “counting the jars of oil”. Dove describes Nestor’s wife as having, “white hands” to say that Nestor’s wife did not do any work around the palace and often was expected to be pampered. But as he was gone she had an affair with one of their servants. I believe this because Dove says “dirt from a lover's back” to imply that she had cheated. So when Nestor arrived back to his kingdom from the war, being unharmed, he was alarmed to find that his kingdom was destroyed. The only thing that still was there was all of his wife's extravagances. Dove tells us this by writing, “only the tub stands” and the “remains of ivory combs and 2,853 tall-stemmed drinking cups in the pantry”. This whole story is pretty ironic, because after Nestor comes back from fighting in the war, he comes back to find his wife who was left with everything she has ever wanted and she has been cheating on him, yet everything in his kingdom has been destroyed except for her extravagances. I think the reason why Dove wrote this story was to convey to the reader that even though this home belonged to Nestor, it was his wife, a normal woman that it truly was a part of, therefore the bathtub was hers and not Nestor's. It has so much to do with a woman’s life that will go on forever, unspoken.
I agree with your analysis of this poem. Another thing that I found interesting about this poem is the fact that the beginning line says, "As usual, legend got it all/ wrong...". I think that this line in a way shows how there is always more to the myth than one thinks. This idea that legend does not always get things right is found again later in the poem, "Legend, as usual, doesn't/ say." Perhaps it could be talking about how this is the only thing people see on the outside, but there could have been so much more going on in their marriage that could have led his wife to cheat on him. Which is why this whole story is pretty ironic because of the fact that everything is destroyed except for the things that she loved the most, almost like a constant reminder of his wife and what she had done, and that she will live on, in a sense.
DeleteThe poem Sonnet in Primary Colors by Rita Dove is really interesting for many reasons. This poem makes many allusions to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, not only are there allusions to her but her life as well. One thing Kahlo was famous for was her appearance, she had a unibrow and this is mentioned twice in this poem, “This is for the women with one black wing/ perched over her eyes…,” (1-2). The wing over her eyes refers to her unibrow, her eyebrows are referenced again in the last line, “... Diego’s love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow,” (11-13). An allusion in this line, besides the one to her brows, is to her husband. Frida Kahlo was married to a man called Diego Rivera, who was also a painter. Aside from the rest of the allusions to her life in this poem, I wanted to point something else out that I thought was really interesting, the fact that this poem has the word ‘sonnet’ in the title, yet it only contains thirteen lines. Why would Rita call this poem a sonnet if it is not a sonnet? My guess is that sonnets usually give off this impression of perfection. Sonnets are usually very carefully constructed and crafted with specific words, and are very lyrical and perfect in way, and are usually look at as romantic. Because of this fact, the word sonnet in this case is used ironically, as the contents of this poem are far from having that perfect fairytale tone to it.
ReplyDeleteI think that the point you made about Dove’s ironic use of “sonnet” in the title was interesting. Although there is some rhyming, evident in the second and fifth lines, as well as in lines three and four, it seems more random and disorganized than in typical sonnets. When I read “Sonnet in Primary Colors”, I also noticed more allusions besides the ones you found that related to Frida Kahlo. The seventh line, “Each night she lay down in pain and rose” alludes to the pain that Frida suffered her whole life after an accident in her youth, leaving her handicapped for the rest of her life. Additionally, the fourth and fifth lines of the Dove’s poem allude to Frida Kahlo’s famed self-portraits, “who painted herself a present-- wildflowers entwining the plaster corset”. In the painting, a circlet of thorns cut into Kahlo’s neck and she is surrounded by greens and nature.
DeleteThe House Slave
ReplyDeleteThe poem is written from the perspective of a young slave. Rita Dove uses a lot of imagery and literary devices in this poem to convey the emotion behind it. The main character watches the field slaves as they are forced to get up before dawn and are whipped if they are too slow. They watch the house slaves and they fears to become one of them like their sister. Even in the heat of the morning, they shiver in fear of their future. Rita Dove uses similes in lines nine and fourteen. The first one, “while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick” is used to show that the white slave owners are hard and unable to be bent, like ivory, even if they are as slim as a toothpick. The slave owners are seen as uncaring and unable to be reasoned with. The second one, “they spill like bees among the fat flowers” compares the slaves to worker bees as they filter into the cotton fields for the day’s work. Like the bees, the slaves have to work tirelessly for their master all day with little reward and in fear. Both of these paint a very clear picture of what this slave is seeing as he looks out the window one morning. Most of the imagery in this poem reveals things as dark and unpleasant. This represents how the main character feels scared and hopeless about where they live and what their life will be like.
You make an excellent point about this being written from the perspective of a slave and its impact. Of the poems read, this one seems to put the most emphasis, as we can see not only who is making the claims but, rather, who is living them. Being able to witness that "I weep" establishes a connection within the perspective; in other words, we can more easily see ourselves in the slave's place. The potency of this is empathy, that being the readers can empathize and feel for the slave in a way that is more than pity, that when the slave notes that "It is not yet daylight," we can understand how dreadful the process is. Dove uses a variety of methods to convey this, but her perspective choice is definitely among the most effective.
DeletePoem: Belinda's Petition
ReplyDeleteThis poem was a little unique in comparison to the others in the packet that was handed out. It had an almost excessive amount of capitalization of words that caught my interest. In this poem, it describes a government that is treating her poorly- white politicians ("...known of Men with Faces like the Moon, who would ride toward me..."). The purpose of capitalization in this poem is to create a mocking and derogatory tone towards the reader, so that the audience could experience the same feelings and emotions that she is feeling toward her government, or her government towards her. Rita Dove was able to express that this nation is lead by whites.
Another interesting aspect in the change of tone within this poem was when Dove took on the perspective of Belinda. When Dove writes,"I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave." the tone of the poem is very forward and almost proud. The purpose of this is to say that everyone must stand up for what they are and fight for a better situation.
The 'poem', "Catherine of Alexandria," embodies the frailty of Rita Dove's poetry. The attempt at constructing a workable piece of poetic literature falls flat as it fails to diverge from legitimately the exact same pattern present in almost all of Rita's other work: random breaks, no rhyme scheme, and a plot that requires other literature to understand what, really, was not worth understanding in the first place. We consider the idea of poetry all the time-- what is poetry, what constitutes a poem-- and yet, as I ponder this question, I cannot fathom a simple definition that would be able to carry this 'poem' under its wing. A short-lived, thin telling of the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the piece, in truth, never evolves beyond simply being just an ambiguous telling of events with random structure tilted towards an audience that likely will never understand it. Take, for example, any of the four breaks found within. Stanza 1 abruptly ends with "came as a voice" and finishes the line in Stanza 2 with "in your bed." What purpose does this serve, you may be asking. Excellent question! I can answer it by not responding, for it has none, one could argue. Let us consider, as another example, some of the literary devices utilized. The last line of the piece, "a ring of milk," is a clear metaphor referring to some representation of either Jesus's clothing, to which she refers earlier in the piece, or of some holy construct, a manifestation of the "promise" the poem brings up. In reality, though, what this accomplishes is all for naught, for the substance of the piece elsewhere is not there. That, in truth, is the true telling of these pieces: empty re-tellings of events with poetic devices thrown in so as to supply the feel of some elevated literary piece. We must ask: had we presented any other poet of fame with such work, would they look upon it as an equal, or of a piece of disgust? Would Poe be moved, or shamed, by the work? Would Whitman, with his verses of "O Captain, My Captain" a proper telling of historical events with real purpose, read with interest, or with boredom? It is unlikely any of them would look favorably upon such a piece, a product seeking merely to mimic their great works, not reinvent the ideas of the past or improve upon the path of literature for the future. If so, why must we look at it differently?
ReplyDeleteIn Rita Dove’s poem, “Canary” to Michael S. Harper, Dove commemorates jazz singer Billie Holiday through symbolism and metaphorical language. Symbolism is present in the title of the poem; a canary is a small songbird, previously used in coal mines as an early warning system, using their song to alert the miners of toxic gases. Birds are also typically used in literature as a symbol of light, life, and freedom, which is retouched in the last line of the poem, “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.” Billie Holiday, who faced many difficulties and suffered from substance abuse, is relatable to a canary, a small songbird who brought light into the world during her time through her songs and music.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza of “Canary”, Dove describes Billie Holiday’s voice and persona. “Billie Holiday’s burned voice had as many shadows as lights, a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano, the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.” Holiday’s “burned” voice was described as being raspy and she had a low vocal range that was further reduced by heavy substance use. Additionally, the gardenia in this stanza is resemblant of the big white flowers that Billie Holiday always pinned to her, becoming her trademark look. Gardenias are bright, pretty, sweet-smelling flowers, a strong juxtaposition to “that ruined face”. The flower resembles purity and light, contrasting with Billie Holiday’s calloused, hard face that had not known much purity or happiness in youth. Dove’s continuous use of fire and light as a theme of the first stanza creates an ephemeral and slightly melancholy tone, producing an image of something like a flickering candle on the verge of burning out.
Lady Freedom Among Us
ReplyDeleteThe first few lines of the poem are talking about being unapologetic and proud of who you are. It is telling the reader to keep their chin held high. The poem starts describing a girl who is determined to stand out from the crowd and be who she wants to be. In the fifth stanza it talks about not doing doing something just because someone else wants you too and how you should not just do things to please others. Next it talks about the idea of freedom that she brings with her wherever she goes and how it inspires everyone around her. It also talks about her not giving up without a fight. She has learned from her experiences and they have made her stronger. She elevates herself to a point where everyone knows about her, and it would be very hard to forget her. No matter what she will keep fighting for what she believes in, freedom. People do not have a choice but to listen to what she has to say. She is one thing, but she affects many people’s lives in such a way that she becomes a part of them. In the title of the poem it refers to “lady freedom” which is another way of saying lady liberty. As lady liberty, she is a symbol of freedom for many. The Statue of Liberty's torch lights the way to freedom showing us the path to liberty. This is very well represented by the persona of the main character in the poem.
I agree completely with your views on the poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” because I seemed to write some of the same points. You brought it to my attention that you wrote about this character, this girl that is the main idea of the poem. You wrote that she is “determined to stand out from the crowd and be who she wants to be”. I agree with this as well because Dove writes, “with her old fashioned sandals with her leaden skirts with her stained cheeks and whiskers and heaped up trinkets she has risen among us in blunt reproach”. Do you think Dove is trying to tell us that this character has been looked down upon as this this person that has had no rankings and is not worth more than a dime and seems to become bigger than anyone has ever expected?
DeletePoem: "The situation is intolerable"
ReplyDeleteThis poem has prevalent themes of racial discrimination, class, and wealth. This poem in the first stanza, describes a group of people that are civilized ("shoes shines, each starched cuff unyielding, each dove gray pleated trouser leg...") but maybe aren't seen as being civilized even if they have the same qualities as everyone else around them. In the last stanza discusses the reality of their situation in society which is a struggle and is complete poverty. This situation that they are in is 'intolerable'. Later it states that the worst thing is to do nothing to improve their situation. I thought this was interesting because it related to a lot of the ideals of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a civil rights activist that fought for the rights of African-Americans. He articulated concepts of race pride and black nationalism and promoted black to "cast off the shackles of racism by any means necessary", including violence.
I definitely agree about the prominent themes of class and racial discrimination within the piece. Fitting well with the civil rights theme, talking of the porous situation into which many, especially African Americans, were born at the time stresses the role this discrimination played. However, I also feel that it goes beyond this, that it actually transcends simple racial discrimination to talk of taking action on the matter. The line, "Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse is to sit here and do nothing," summarizes this well. The main point of the piece, I would argue, is not simply discrimination but a call to action in combat of this discrimination. Playing off other pieces such as "Rosa," the talk of civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X suits this idea well, and "The situation is intolerable" utilizes this to a great extent.
DeletePoem: Lady Freedom Among Us
ReplyDeleteThe poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” by Rita Dove is exactly what the title entails. The entirety of the poem is talking about how we all have this fighter inside of us. Whether that be that we are fighting for freedom or we are fighting for what we believe in, we are fighting and we are not backing down. In the beginning of the poem it talks to us about how we shouldn’t be afraid of who we are and that we should take pride in what we do. For example, Dove writes, “don’t lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going”. This tells us that we should not be afraid of what goals we set and what directions we take in life, for it is our life and we have the right to control it the way we want. Hence the theme in these poems being generalized with Civil Rights. Towards the end of the poem in the second to last stanza, Dove writes, “don’t think you can ever forget her don’t even try she’s not going to budge”. This quote explains to us, the readers, that we all have this fight within us, this drive, to become the best person in our life, to fight for the things we believe in and defend it at all costs, because no matter how hard you work to change your mind on something, it will not move from it’s original spot. Also, the title of the poem “Lady Freedom Among Us” tells us that Lady Freedom may represent Lady Liberty, which is a big sign to many of freedom and hope. This might also be interpreted that this poem is about the natural freedom is a thing that everyone in this country deserves to own. Sometimes there are instances that this may be taken away but only if this situation calls for it because said owner used it irresponsibly. And with Lady Liberty’s torch lighting the way for many and guiding us towards a future of brightness and hope, it also is relevant in this poem with the main character and her persona of not giving in or letting someone pick and choose her fights that she wants to win.
I also thought that the structure of this poem was really interesting, not just because of the weird stanzas but also because something I noticed is that nothing in this poem is capitalized. Going off of your analysis, perhaps the reason that nothing is capitalized is because the person telling this story, almost refuses to conform to society, and not capitalizing the words in the poem is a subtle way to showing that. That she is free do what she wants, that she deserves the same rights as anyone else. I totally agree with the idea that Lady Freedom represents Lady Liberty, and that this poem is trying to say that, there is still hope. There is still hope that things can change, and that everyone can get the civil rights that they deserve, and have those natural rights or freedoms as you mentioned. And that there is no stopping what she wants to do because she has that hope for a brighter future.
DeleteIn the ‘poem’ Rosa by Rita Dove, history is mixed with admiration to blend together ideas of the past with ideas of the present. The piece comes from the story of Rosa Parks, the famed civil rights activist, and tells of attributes describing “How she sat there,” setting the scene of her famous refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white man. It continues to describe, in an admiring tone, her modest nature yet firm attitude, the “courtesy” she possessed, the “clean flame of her gaze” taken by a photograph. In doing so, Dove seeks to continue the awareness and legend, of sorts, pertaining to Parks, tying together her activist nature with those ideas of civil unrest in present times. Writing in a flattering manner of Rosa only serves to continue her presence for future generations, ensuring the knowledge of her events will spread to future generations. As a result, anyone who picks up this poem and dives into its content will soon learn of Rosa, fulfilling Dove’s goal of passing Parks’ legacy down to the next generation.
ReplyDeleteThis is all welcome and joyous, yet one wonders as to whether or not this ‘poem’ truly is constructed and delivered in such a way that its content will actually be conveyed. After all, it’s 12 lines, many of which are less than a simple declarative statement. Is this truly fair to the legacy of Rosa? Is this the idea that people should have of her, one of coats, a clean gaze, and her purse, not one of her passion, her perseverance, her drive in the face of opposition? At the same time, one can argue that the piece barely constitutes a literary construction fit to pass throughout those generations. There is a case to made for brevity, by all means, but the style is so simple, I would argue that the presentation of this side-by-side with a poem tossed together by a student of literature would bear almost no difference between the two. On the contrary, actually, one could say the literature student’s piece would present itself with more content, depth, and usage of devices. And this all forgoes the fact that Rosa possesses no rhyme pattern, yet unlike many of Dove’s other pieces such as her Mother Love sonnets, there appears to be no purpose to the lack of a scheme. Even the enjambment loans little to the rhyme pattern, perhaps aiming more to look like a poem than service as one.
All in all, Dove’s piece possesses a noble purpose, yet there is much criticism to be had as to its methodology and final product.
In her poem "Freedom Ride", Rita Dove incorporates bus imagery into her poem, using phrases like "Pull the cord a stop too soon", "Pick any stop", and "but where you sit is where you'll be when the fire hits" to make the reader understand the situation of segregated bus rides during the Civil Rights era in a creative way.
ReplyDeleteDove explains to the reader that being a person of color on a bus was extremely terrible with the repeated use of fire diction in the last two lines of every stanza in the poem. This use of fire diction can represent how blacks were "under fire" during these times and how many thought that there will be no hope for a bright future with the lines "But there's just more cloud cover, and germy air, condensing on the tinted glass,.." (6-8) and "at every corner the same scorched brick, darkened windows" (21-22).
The reader can also assume that those sitting at the back of the bus found despair when it came to segregated buses with the lines "you'll find yourself walking a gauntlet of stares" (13-14). A gauntlet is a piece of armor a knight wears to cover and protect their wrist, so I interpreted this line as though colored people have had thick skin when dealing with oppression, people will still give them looks and stares because of the color of their skin if in the wrong neighborhood, hence the mention of a gauntlet.
I also thought it was interesting that Dove included bus-related motifs in the poem to supplement the overall “scene” of the poem. After all, the Freedom Riders’ movement and bus boycotts encompassed much of the points and details explained in the poem. I liked how you included the significance of the fire motif in this poem, as it is also present in many other of the “Civil Rights” poems by Rita Dove, such as in “Rosa”, which describes Rosa Parks and her historically famed bus ride. The third stanza, “Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash”, contained an example of Dove’s fire motif in another piece of her writing. The “clean flame” symbolized the powerful unwavering movement of her gaze and served as a connotation of how Rosa was a “spark” for the union and bus boycotting.
DeleteA poem that really stuck out to me in this collection of poems was “The situation is intolerable”. This poem talks about the many different aspects of racism and general racial tension in the United States and characterizes it as intolerable. The poem appears to be like a call to action, almost, “Our situation is intolerable, but what’s worse is to sit here and do nothing,”(19-20). Dove is saying that yes, this situation that they are in, with all the racial tension of the civil rights movement is intolerable, and that something must be done in order for everything to be fixed. That you can't just sit around and hope for everything to figure itself out. Another thing that really stuck out about this poem is the title, it is in quotation marks. At first I had thought that it was a quote that someone may have said, and so I looked it up and found nothing, which made the choice of putting quotations around the title very interesting. The fact that there are quotations around the title gives off the feeling or impression that someone is speaking, so someone could be saying that the situation is intolerable. Considering that this is about civil rights there can be two approaches as to the perspective of the poem and who is saying the title. And the one that makes the most sense in terms of the poem is it is from the perspective of a black person who is describing all the inequalities and the struggles of poverty, and is responding to the person who is saying, “The situation is intolerable.” The person who could be saying the title could be a white person who is referring to the black and their movement as intolerable. Almost like saying that their cause is worthless and that it is simply preposterous that black people want the same rights as any other person. And so the poem is a response to that phrase, “Aren’t we civilized, too?”(2). The person responding is talking about how these people who perhaps are not as wealthy, and are looked at by society as uncivilized, but is proposing the idea that they are in fact civilized and should be held to the same standard. That is what the first two stanzas are about. The third stanza mainly focuses on the struggles of poverty, “SO what if we were born up a creek/ and knocked flat with the paddle, if we ain’t got a pot to piss in/ and nowhere to put it if we did?”(15-18). This is followed by the call to action, suggesting that the poverty that they live in and the discrimination that people receive depending on their color or their class is intolerable, and that something must be done about it.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRita Dove’s “Rosa” divulges and personalizes the impact of Rosa Parks and her protest against racial discrimination through Dove’s utilization of short, declarative sentences and anaphora at the beginning and end of the poem. “Rosa” is comprised of concise, direct lines that accurately describe the story of Rosa Parks. The brusque structure of the poems capture the reader’s attention and convey a more intense mood. Additionally, the more harsh-sounding words contribute to the overall seriousness and lyrical tone of the poem. This is especially evident in the third stanza of the poem: “Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash”. Both “clean”, “carved”, and “camera” begin with harsh, cutting sounds which result in a type of lyricism that mimics alliteration. The imagery invoked by the “clean flame of her gaze” resembles Rosa Park’s stern, icy-hot expression, as if her eyes are burning with the intensity of a white-hot, “clean” flame. The brevity of each of the lines and break between separate different ideas of the retelling distinguish between differences in moods of the stanzas.
ReplyDeleteIn Dove’s “Rosa”, the anaphora that takes place in the first lines of the first and last stanzas helps create a feeling of connectedness between the entire poem. The poem begins with, “How she sat there” and ends with “How she stood up”. The repetitive wording add extra emphasis to the importance of her actions and puts a stress on the first and last stanzas, marking them as the most significant in the poem. The change between Rosa sitting and then standing creates movement and finality; in the beginning, Rosa’s actions are unwary and vulnerable. The “place so wrong” describes the state of racial discrimination in the setting and the danger it may pose to those who defy it. However, at the end Rosa is taking a stand up from the bus seat, as well as for herself and for the rights of people of color. The last two lines, “when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.” give Rosa a dominant connotation, as if they are bowing in submission to her and she is deemed more powerful.
Poem: Parsley
ReplyDeletebackground: El General is said to be 'searching for a word' which is 'perejil'-which is an allusion to the resulting massacre. (A general ordered 20,000 hatian blacks to be executed, and had them pronounce the word 'perejil' to determine if they would be executed or not.)
This poem was interesting because it was separated into two distinct parts. The words, parrot and cane, were specifically repeated throughout the poem probably as a way to symbolize this event in history. The parrot could be seen as the general who ordered the execution of the haitians. "A parrot imitating spring" could be seen that the general is announcing that a new era is beginning for the country of haiti.
I thought the form was definitely a key part of this. You made a good point by tying in the background, as I always saw the background as a huge portion of the story. Most of the points and lines makes little to no sense without any background knowledge, not that they really make sense in the first place, of course. However, the crux of Parsley is definitely the ties back to its influence, and many of the references to Haitian culture are clear. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of the poem is this, that it wraps itself around its background.
DeletePoem: Parsley (The Cane Fields)
ReplyDeleteThis poem is an allusion to the dictator Rafael Trujillo. He was from the Dominican Republic and he was the commander in chief of the National Army before he became the president. Calling Rafael “El General” could also refer to him time in the military. The parrot that is mentioned throughout the poem is used as a symbol of his wealth because in that time period parrots were pets for the rich. It is also a symbol for spring because of its color, green is typically used to represent spring. The poem also says how “a parrot imitating spring” in second, fourth, and sixth stanza. The poem also talks about how the cane workers are mistreated. The parrot and the swamp are used to contrast the wealth and the poor workers in the fields which creates a very tense mood. The haitian workers being mistreated could be a symbol for the 20,000 haitians that were massacred under the control of Rafael Trujillo. There was also lots of repetition in this poem. The phrase “a parrot imitating spring” was used three times, and the phrase “out of the swamp the cane appears” was used four times. This repetition was used to state the importance of those lines in the poem. “Out of the swamp the cane appears” is an interesting phrase because cane does not actually grow in water, even though it requires a very tropical climate. The swamp could be a metaphor for the struggle and suffering of the workers that were harvesting it.
I agree that the parrot that is frequently mentioned throughout Dove’s “Parsley” is symbolic of spring and new beginning. However, I also believed that the parrot in the repeated phrase, “... a parrot imitating spring” is resemblant of Trujillo. Spring is often a new start or phase, a new era. It’s a hopeful season that comes after a long winter. Raphael Trujillo being the parrot imitating spring is how he believed with the Parsley Massacre he would be commencing a new era in the Dominican Republic, a fresh start without the Haitians. This is displayed in the sixth stanza, “... in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming. And we lie down. For every drop of blood there is a parrot imitating spring. Out of the swamp the cane appears.” The drops of blood in this stanza represent every Haitian death that came by his movement’s hand. For every murder, Trujillo is building his version of a “fresh start”, his “spring” after a long winter.
DeleteParsley was a very interesting poem I must say. Knowing the context of the situation really helped to fully understand what was going on. In the first part of Parsley, The Cane Fields, it shows us the perspective of the workers, the ones being tortured and killed. Two lines are repeated over and over that really catch my attention. The first one being, “Out of the swamp the cane appears…” and the other being, “A parrot imitating spring”. The first line about the cane is followed by is “Out of the swamp the cane appears/ to haunt us” but there’s a line break so I didn’t catch it the first time. The last one says “The cane appears in our dreams”, from these two examples it feels like to the slaves the cane is always around them, it haunts them, there’s no escaping the cane or the pain that the cane brings, not even in their dreams can they escape the pain. Moving on to the other repeating quote is the parrot, I don’t know why I see it this way but to me the slave just keeps hearing that word over and over again it’s like an annoying parrot that just keeps saying “Perejil”, so maybe the parrot is supposed to be El General Trujillo in a way. In the next part, we see it more from Trujillo’s perspective. Apparently, he lost his mother and he’s been in war and seen soldiers die in front of him. I feel that he’s seen a great deal of death and tragically lost his mother and felt loss and pain and sorrow, I can see this now that he’s been through a lot in his life, yet is that an excuse to kill tens of thousand of innocent Haitian slaves, no. Well, that’s the way I see the poem, I can’t wait to discuss this in class and hear what the others have to say!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your stance on the fact that the poem was in fact an interesting one and I also agree that the you saw the two parts of the poem as well, the first poem being about the workers and the second part being from Trujillo’s perspective. Like I wrote in my blog post I agreed that the workers in the first part were being described as being tortured and in pain from the abuse that these workers were receiving. I also agree that in the second part Trujillo is upset because he has lost his mother that fall and has dealt with a lot of death recently from being at the palace to being out on the battlefront and seeing his soldiers die in front of his very own feet.
DeletePoem: Parsley
ReplyDelete“Parsley” by Rita Dove I know was not just confusing for me, for it has been confusing for all of us as well. I am going to have to be honest here, this poem was my least favorite so far out of all of Rita Dove’s poems because it leaves us the reader at such a crossroad. We can take it in so many different directions and several interpretations that ]may leave us with a headache rather than a complete understanding of the poem and its entirety. I saw this poem as two different parts. The first part titled, “The Cane Fields” and the second part titled, “The Palace”. The first part is from the point of view from the Haitian workers and their gruelling lives and how they are treated by The General, who is in theory the main focus of the second part of the poem. As it says in the excerpt from “The Farming of Bones”, “His face was buried in a puddle of green spew. He was not moving. Someone threw a bucketful of water at the back of his head.” which correlates to the quote from Dove’s poem, “we down screaming as rain punches through and we come up green.” The rain signifying the water and the green signifying the green parsley. This shows us that these workers and farmers were not treated very well and these were interpreted as the pain and fear that they had to endure. Dove also repeat a lot of the same lines in the first part of the poem including, “Like a parrot imitating spring.” The parrot seems to signify a time where things were happier in the spring and they were better for the workers and they were treated well. But now it is fall like it says in the second part of the poem, and this is the time the General’s mother dies. The parrot can also signify a sense of hope and the mother itself because when the mother was around, when it was spring, everything was all sunshine and rainbows and then fall had come and the mother had died and fall has begun.
I completely agree with your statement that this poem was confusing, I had to read it multiple times until I could get a feel as to what it was trying to get at. And I think this is noticeable as I read through these comments that there is a pretty wide variety of interpretation of this poem. I agree with your statement about how the first part is from the perspective of a Haitian worker, and that the second part is from the point of view of the General. I was very confused about the second part of this poem, just because it seemed kind of all over the place, but your blog post actually helped clear it up a bit!
DeleteThe poem “Parsley” by Rita Dove sure is an interesting one. This poem seemed different than many of the other poems that we have read by Dove. I think that this poem is a great example of why Rita Dove is so highly acclaimed. She brings light to a lot of topics that many not have even heard of. Obviously Dove is very well educated and is very well educated on a variety of topics. To be completely honest, I did not know very much about this topic when I had first read the poem, I had read the reading that came along with the poem and did even more research on my own until the poem made a little more sense. This poem is an allusion to a genocide and massacre of many people lead by Rafael Trujillo. The poem is split into two parts, and either this poem is a little too straightforward or there is a lot more that I was simply not getting And there is so much to talk about in this poem, but I will be going over the first part. The first part of this poem, “The Cane Fields” there was a lot of anaphora used. Phrases like “There is a parrot imitating spring” as well as “Out of the swamp the cane appears” are repeated multiple times throughout the first part. The parrot in this case is a symbol for money or wealth in a sense, birds usually represent flight, which represents freedom, and then the swamp can represent suffocation, almost. This is juxtaposition and has an affect on the reader as they can compare those who were killed because they couldn't pronounce the word parsley correctly, versus those who were free from that and were able to escape being killed. The word cane is also used very interestingly, cane is a pun in this poem because it represents two things. The title of this first part is “The Cane Fields” which would allude to sugar cane fields, but this is using the word cane in a violent manner, which could represent how these people would get beat up if they could not pronounce the word parsley properly, “We cannot speak and R-/ out of the swamp, the cane appears,” (8-9). Overall this poem shows the true violence of these atrocities committed on these people over something that is, quite frankly, very stupid, for lack of a better word.
ReplyDeletePrior to my reading tonight, I truly thought that I had reached the pinnacle of Rita Dove’s inherent lack of poetic nature and credibility. I truly believed that there was nothing that woman could throw at me that could make me lose more faith in her works. And yet, here I am, writing once again about how her pieces fail to carry any trait of poetry, any redeeming factor to expand and continue the everlasting human ideal of art. Here I am, writing about Parsley.
ReplyDeleteParsley starts by exacerbating one of the worst qualities of Dove’s work: a necessity for context. While the ‘poem,’ frankly, makes no sense anyways, it makes even less so without a great briefing on background prior to its reading. A “proper” understanding and reading is only made possible by background into the influences of the piece, as well as its actual plot. That’s right: the work actually requires another work to even function. This is, in reality, just an expansion pack to another work, simply another patch to the metaphorical gaming content provided in the vanilla version. By limiting the work like this, Dove innately cuts off an enormous chunk of her audience, as people with no background (a.k.a. most people) will be completely unable to grasp anything from it.
Dove limits the damage, though, by ensuring the piece is not even worth grasping. Another wandering series of words, Parsley has virtually no redeeming qualities in its writing. It uses pointless literary devices and empty grasps at symbolism (a la the parrot), not to mention vague and out of place references to Australia, simply to construct a piece her publisher would put out, one that looks like it means something when it actually doesn’t. And that’s another thing! This is another example of what I like to call “mid-sentence enter format,” whereby the author seems to have accidentally hit the “enter” key and skipped down a line for no reason. This comes with the endless and meaningless enjambments (“He is all the world/there is”), not to mention breaks that wander about, providing nothing but extra “form” to the poem (“The parrot/ who has traveled all the way from Australia”). The format of hitting enter is rampant among almost all of Dove’s work, and it’s perhaps the most excruciating factor. It seems almost as though Dove banks completely on looking like poetry while failing to develop it into poetry.
In the grand scheme of things, we can measure poetry by looking at 4 spheres: Individuality, Literary Styling, Structure, and Audience-- ILSA, if you will. Parsley fails on each front. It is totally dependent upon another story and is wholly non-unique, failing the Individuality test. It lacks purpose in its literary devices, and its usage of techniques does not advance the text, hence it fails Literary Styling. Its structure is wandering, confusing, and lacks key components like rhyme, proper spacing, and rhythm. Perhaps most importantly, its audience is incredibly limited and it makes no effort to extract interest, draining it of any score here. Parsley is inherently flawed, and instead of lauding it, perhaps we should look critically and learn what not to do, how to create poetry with a purpose, and where to go from here in the future of literature, because boy, does it seem like we took a step back.
The poem "Parsley" by Rita Dove, aka, the only poem in the Politics of History section is truly one to be remembered. I have to admit though, if a reader was trying to read the poem without any background knowledge they would have struggles. If a reader DID read the poem with some background knowledge.. They would still have struggles, take me as an example of that. The excerpt from, The Farming of Bones shows the struggles of Odette trying to say a simple but deadly word: "Perejil." "... even though the trill of the r and the precision of the j was sometimes too burdensome a joining for my tongue... I could have said it. But I didn't get my chance." this struggle of trying to pronounce the constant change of the word 'Parsley' could be seen repeatedly throughout the both "The Cane Fields" and "The Palace." I think that Dove continues to use that struggle to show just how drastic of a genocide this truly was in an overlooked part of history. How unnecessary it was for Rafael Trujillo to kill people over "a single, beautiful word," and showing how monstrous people found their entertainment back then. The word was changed and manipulated many times, from Katalina to Perejil to Parsley, but the outcomes were still the very same. If the Haitian workers couldn't pronounce the word, they simply died. Much like the parrot trying to imitate spring, the bird is trying to be something so beautiful and full of life, just like the season, but it is instead stuck inside a cage of a wealthy palace. In this case we can try to compare the parrot to the Haitian workers, who long for something more, but are instead stuck inside a cage of enslavement. The parrot was also characterized as being green with a black tongue, which can represent the contrast of it's outward beauty, green: full of life and wealth and nature, to a black lifeless soul on the inside. But, because the parrot and roll it's Rs (to which I personally cannot, so I found this poem kind of relatable), Trujillo kept the bird alive and well. The General treated that bird with more respect than the Haitians which means that the parrot, although he is made to be more human through Trujillo's care, it parallels the tragic and enslaved life of a Haitian working in a cane field.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete“Parsley” by Rita Dove describes the Parsley Massacre that took place in 1937 in the Dominican Republic. The Parsley Massacre was the mass genocidal murder of the Haitian population in the Dominican Republic that was led by Dominican President Rafael Trujillo. The first part of the poem, “The Cane Fields”, consists of a Haitian point of view. In this section, I thought it was interesting that Trujillo is described as “El General” even though he was commonly nicknamed “El Jefe”, which means “chief”. The term “general” is more commanding and military-like, while chief can portray a “leader or ruler of people or a clan.” This can be due to Trujillo having a more fearful and authoritative hand over the Haitians, as well as represent the Haitians’ inability to pronounce the silent “j” the same way as the native Dominicans. In “The Cane Fields”, the phrase “out of the swamp the cane appears” is frequently repeated, even used as caesura in a break between sentences, “He laughs, teeth shining out of the swamp. The cane appears…” Although the “cane” may be symbolic of the sugar cane that many Haitians harvested while enslaved, I thought it to be more resemblant of El General and Trujillo himself due to the significantly different time period setting (1740s while the Parsley Massacre was set in 1937). In this case, the cane could portray how the Haitians were subjected to similar feelings of inferiority when treated by Trujillo as when their ancestors harvested cane as slaves. However, I believed that the cane was another representation of Trujillo and his overbearing presence throughout the poem and the massacre. Although a cane or stick can be perceived as support for someone frail, I comprehended it as a symbol of abuse and power, such as when someone is “caned”, or beat.
ReplyDeleteMany of the poems in this section have a very upbeat and nice vibe, a good contrast from the previous poems. Fox Trot Fridays really stood out to me in this sense, it’s very enjoyable and pleasant to read. The Foxtrot was a very popular dance in the 1930’s, and it is usually paired with upbeat swing music. In the first few lines of the poem, we see Friday's are the days where you don’t have to think about anything else you can, “tuck in/ the grief, lift your pearls, and/ stride brush stride”, all you have to do is dance. The “quick-quick with a/ heel ball toe,” makes it almost feel like I'm watching someone dancing, or dancing myself. I like the allusion to Nat King Cole and the simile of his “slow satin smile”. Nat King Cole was a jazz singer from the 1940’s, I’ve listened to his music before and it has a nice and smooth feel to it, not to mention, he has a great smile. The “one man and/ one woman,/rib to rib,/with no heartbreak in sight” line is showing the connection that the dance creates between the two parties and the joy it brings. The final lines create the image of the atmosphere that the dance and music create, “the sweep of paradise and the space of a song/ to count all the wonders in it.” The Foxtrot was an escape from reality and the space was wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThis set of poems was very different from the rest of Rita Dove's poems, and that was really nice and refreshing. These poems, were much happier, and many seemed a lot more rhythmic than the rest of the poems that we have read in class. My favorite of these poems was “American Smooth”. This poem shows two people who are dancing in a romantic sense and describes the feeling of becoming lost in a dance. Dove uses oxymorons to show how through dancing you can let go a little bit, “...such perfect agony/one learns to smile through”(10-11) as well as with, “ecstatic mimicry /being the sine qua non/ of American Smooth,” (12-14). At first I was confused as to what sine qua non meant, and so I looked it up, and it means something that is absolutely necessary. What I thought this meant was that in order to dance these types of dances that there is a journey, that you go through essentially, with these dances. Dove compares the feeling of dancing to flying, “I didn’t notice/ how still you’d become until/ we had done it/… achieved flight,” (22-26). That feeling of simply letting go in can be achieved through dancing, and the feeling of flying can be achieved, as you loose yourself, and glide across the dance floor. This sense of flight through dance is depicted in some of the other poems in this collection, like “Ta Ta Cha Cha”. And once you are done dancing that feeling of flight, of being something more than just human, no longer exists, “before the earth/ remembered who we were/ and brought us down,” (29-31).
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree, the tone shift between this set and others remains quite visible. It's a good change of tone, of course, and it comments on Dove's ability to address a number of unique topics. This is one of the most redeeming qualities of her work (though I cannot say there are many...): her willingness to expand her writing horizons and explore what is out there. Her conveyance of flight and dancing present a freeing feel for the pieces, especially withing "American Smooth," and this can be reflected in many ways. The poem's features and qualities are more noticeable, the piece itself has more drawing interest in readers, and it remains one of Dove's most known pieces as a result. Perhaps if Dove modeled more work after "American Smooth" and friends, her collection could spread further and be more sound poetically.
DeletePoem: Fox Trot Fridays
ReplyDeleteI have to say that these poems in the American Smooth are much more upbeat and happier than the ones that we have read from Rita Dove prior. The one that really stood out to me from this group of poems was Fox Trot Fridays, which was in fact a popular dance back in the 1930’s that can be described as a smooth, progressive waltz and is still popular in today’s world. The poem itself is incredibly upbeat and cheerful compared to her other poems that we have read in class. This poem kind of tells us that this dance is an escape for people to get away from all the pain in their lives. For example Dove writes, “Thank the stars there’s a day each week to tuck in the grief, lift your pearls, and stride brush stride”. This explains that this dance can take all the worries away from what we feel in our everyday’s life and can make all the problems in the world disappear. This one day that everyone looks forward to at the end of their week, makes all the difference in their lives for the long run even though it is just one dance on one day of the week. They feel as though they are invincible and nothing can touch them. Dove writes, “rib to rib, with no heartbreak in sight”. This tells us that nothing can do any harm to these people during this dance. I can relate this to an athlete playing the sport they love or a musician playing the instrument they love. We all have that one thing that we can not physically live without or we have nothing to our name. We are all just lonely people in this world and we need something to entertain us so that we can actually start living the lives we deserve to live.
I really like your analysis of this poem. I thought that the upbeat tone of these poems was a great contrast to the other poems we have read in her class. One thing I had noticed about this poem in particular, and some of the other poems in this series, is that its very rhythmic. As I was reading it, I decided to read it out loud, and it had a certain meter to it, it sounded lyrical almost. It sounds almost smooth, and jazz like, which I think matches this poem perfectly as that is the type of music that foxtrots are danced to. Similarly, another thing I noticed was the structure of this poem. Each stanza is made up of couplets, except for the last one. I thought that it was to have the effect of two people dancing. What do you think?
DeleteAlthough a vixen is typically just a female fox, it can also refer to a sexually attractive woman, which Rita Dove’s poem, “Fox”, describes. “Fox” has a similar title to Dove’s “Foxtrot Fridays”, but that’s where most similarities end. The foxtrot— a sweet, smooth, waltz-like dance contrasts greatly with a glamorous and sultry vixen. The appearance of “Fox” is curvy and smooth, resemblant of a woman’s body or a fox’s lush tail. This adds to the effect of the poem’s title and helps in creating visual imagery.
ReplyDelete“Fox” consists of two stanzas similar to each other in terms of Rita Dove’s use of enjambment and anaphora. Each stanza is made up of two sentences. The two sentences of both stanzas begin with “She…”, such as in the first stanza, “She loved what / she was, there / for the taking, / imagine.” and the second, “She loved / nothing more / than what she had / which was enough / for her, / which was more / than any man / could handle.” When first reading the poem and comparing the two stanzas, I believed that the second part was more negative than the first one, which seemed hopeful and positive in comparison. This feeling of hopefulness is evident in the first sentence, “She knew what / she was and so / was capable / of anything / anyone / could imagine.” The fox (vixen) is confident and optimistic— she is capable of anything and everything possible. I assumed that the following stanza was less inspiring, especially because of the first sentence, “She imagined / nothing.” However, this second half of the poem isn’t as condemning and negative as it first appears. Although “imagining nothing” can seem bleak, it may also mean that the woman’s mind is clear and calm. She’s not expectant of anything or anyone, and is simply at peace with herself. The second sentence, “She loved / nothing more / than what she had, / which was enough / for her, / which was more / than any man / could handle.” describes the woman’s peacefulness and contentedness in her own skin and state-of-mind. Her possessions and expectations don’t cause her unhappiness or make her want to crave more, and she doesn’t feel as though she has to settle or change herself for a man to be satisfied. In Dove’s “Fox”, the subject is a strong, confident woman who understands and appreciates herself and her own worth.
Human history is a history of progress, of creation, of ingenuity. It is a history of art, of language, of beauty. It is a history of poetry, of meanings within words. But within that, it is a history of rhyme.
ReplyDeleteRhyme within poetry is, well, a poetic thing. It can transfix you, its sense and wave of rhythm unfound through other methods. Within the past of the art, it lurks within every nook and cranny. Whether it be the works of Poe (Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary), the art of Whitman (Exult O shores, and rings O bells!/ But I with mournful tread/ Walk the deck my Captain lies/ Fallen cold and dead), or even the musings of Theodore Geisel (I do not like green eggs and ham/ I do not like them, Sam I Am), rhyme is integral to form, rhythm, and our idea of poetry.
So why does Rita Dove hate it with such a passion?
Her work exists as, apparently, just a mixture of spaces and lines, bereft of the rhythm that awarded poetry such an audience, such a response over time. She attacks it with an almost insatiable fury, refusing to rhyme almost all of her works, never yielding to our construct of what poems should be. But why? This only weakens her poems. Less people read it, less people understand it, less people emulate it. Is this not the exact opposite of what a poet seeks?
Perhaps the most excruciating part is not that she does not rhyme; rather, it is that she easily could. The poem Quick is an excellent example. Dove has split the work into multiple parts, groups of 2 lines, with 1 single line at the end. We can examine this, therefore, by these groups, and see just how well rhyme would apply. The couplet “Now he peers from the culvert/ all bobble and twitch, vacant eyes” is a great starting point! Why not “Upon the culvert, now he peers/ Bobble and twitch, vacant eyes, great fears”? Or perhaps “From the culvert, now he sees/ Bobble and twitch, appearing to freeze”? Trivial changes, albeit, but the point remains. The lack of rhyme services nothing but to make work easier for Dove. It requires less effort, less thought, and less overall heart imbued into the work. We should hold this as a great criticism of her. Within works like Quick, the point is less clear. The storyline, the setting, and all the other elements are left near invisible, least of all attractive, to the general audience. What poet should be rewarded for surviving on this?
The House Slave by Rita Dove gives the reader a glimpse into the world of house slaves, and their experiences. It is told from the perspective of a house slave, they tell us of the daily struggle and sadness of the house slave. The poem starts with the image of “The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass and in the slave quarters there is a rustling—” The slaves are woken up by horns very early in the morning, the dew is still on the grass from the night before, and the slaves are getting ready to go to work in the fields. The next part uses simile, “I watch them driven into the vague before-dawn while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick”. The simile of the mistress sleeping like and ivory toothpick is showing the high wealth and prosperity of the rich white master and his mistress, and it shows she can sleep soundly and not have to worry about what tomorrow holds for her, unlike the slaves. Sleep is very significant and is brought up many times throughout the poem. The next stanza writes, “and Massa dreams of asses, rum and slave-funk. I cannot fall asleep again.”. Similar to the mistress, the master doesn’t have to worry about what tomorrow holds, he sleeps well, dreaming of all the luxuries of being a rich, white, slave owner. And yet, the speaker of the poem, still cannot sleep, she’s too worried about what the future holds. Dove writes, “At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards—sometimes my sister’s voice, unmistaken, among them. “Oh! pray,” she cries. “Oh! pray!” The speaker is saddened by the abuse that the field slaves receive, she hears her sister being abused and can do nothing to stop it. The end of the poem writes, “I weep. It is not yet daylight.”. The house slave feels so helpless that all she can do is cry, and still she cannot find sleep.
ReplyDeletePoem: Fox Trot Fridays
ReplyDeleteIn the poem “Fox Trot Fridays”, Rita Dove uses many allusions. More than one of the allusions is to a type of dance. The structure of the poem suggests a waltz tempo; the two line stanzas being the up beats and the break in between being the down. She also references a dance that is most likely the fox trot in the lines, “quick-quick with a heel-ball-toe.” There was also a dance allusion in the stanza before that saying “stride brush stride”. She included lots of dance imagery because in her personal life she and her husband were ballroom dancers and it was something she loved to do. Another allusion was to Nat King Cole who was an American singer who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist in the 50's. There are also three biblical allusions in the poem in the sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas. The first one is “one man and one women,” which is a reference to Adam and Eve. In the line, “just the sweep of Paradise”, paradise could be a reference to the garden of Eden. The other biblical reference is “rib to rib” because a women is supposedly made from a man’s rib bone. These biblical references were probably included because they are things many people have heard of or can relate to.
The poem "David Walker (1785-1830)" tells the tell of an African American abolitionist (a person that advocates for the ending to slavery) by the name of David Walker, hence the title. The reader will immediately notice the years put next to Walker's name, making an assumption that it was the year of his birth and of his death. But, when an astute reader looks up David Walker, they can see that he was born in the year 1796, not 1785. He did however, die in the year 1830, which must mean that there must be some correlation between slavery in the year 1785 (a significance that I personally have not found the answer to) and the year of David Walker's death.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, Dove mentions that he was "free to travel." David Walker's father was a slave while his mother was free, deeming him free as well. Though he was free from the inhumane acts of slavery, he still made an impressive impact in the abolitionist movement, the poem portraying his influence through Dove's use of italicized text, which, if you take separately, seems to be coming from the POV of David Walker himself, the majority of the text being his powerful and blunt abolitionist statements. We can see society's reaction to his statements right after a few of the italicized text, their opinions being very against his ideas of equality. "Outrage. Incredulity. Uproar in state legislatures."and "The jeweled canaries in the lecture halls tittered (a short, half-suppressed laugh).."
The first two stanzas speak of Walker's everyday life, using visual imagery to convey a sort overwhelming feeling by throwing a whole bunch of objects into the stanzas like the compass needles, the ceiling fans, coat linings of itinerant seamen, jackets, and pamphlets. This gives the reader a direct view from the eyes of Walker himself, making us feel like being an African American abolitionist, or an abolitionist in general, is a hard duty to pull off with the constant overwhelming negativity that is put upon them.
I agree with your first statement about how the year 1785 must mean something that is related to slavery itself rather than David Walker’s life span. In my opinion I think it was the start of when slavery was starting to grow bigger and bigger in America and also when slaves started to believe that there was some type of way out to where they could earn their freedom. And like you said, David Walker was granted freedom because his mother was not a slave which meant that there was a way out and many more that they do not yet know about. So I agree with your argument to how it is quite confusing why they mentioned 1785 and not 1796, when he was born. But if I did have a theory it would be quite similar to your blog post.
DeletePoem: The House Slave
ReplyDeleteNow we take a break from the happy, relaxing poems that Dove writes in American Smooth and flashback to a period that is not so happy to talk about, Slavery. “The House Slave” by Rita Dove is an example of the sadness and the horrific actions that took place during these times in our history. The poem is from a point of view of a slave that is working for his/her master and mistress. The poem itself is kind of depressing to hear about something that we couldn’t have experienced and it is unbelievable that one human can treat another human this way. For example, Dove writes, “At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards”. Laggards means someone who falls behind and makes slow progress. Basically this explains to us that the slaves that were not up and working by the second horn were being whipped by their master. These were the consequences that colored people had to face during the time period and it would have been traumatizing to see a loved one or a close friend that they have been working along side for days or weeks is being treated unfairly by these people that are no different from them other than their skin color. Although this poem is from a slave's perspective, it does have a negative tone to it. Dove writes, “It is not daylight yet”. I feel as if the daylight is a symbol for freedom for the slaves, and the narrator believes that freedom has not yet come. But you see, the keyword is yet. This narrator is holding some type of hope to say this to where there is freedom ahead of them and in their near futures’. As this slave sees the other slaves being whipped it just flares this hope inside of them even more, so as the hope builds and builds, these slaves have something that they will look forward to. Even though their masters don’t treat them right, freedom will come and they will not have to be treated this way anymore.
In the poem “The House Slave,” Rita Dove uses perspective and descriptive imagery to convey the experience of a slave. Perhaps the biggest emotional facet of this piece lies within the use of the term “I.” This establishes the perspective as first-person, allowing readers into the eyes and mind of a house slave from back in time. The line, “I weep,” carries much emotion because of this, and its unique peek into the mind of a slave embodies itself as such. Carrying this perspective possesses much value to readers, as seeing how few people from today were alive in the time of slavery-- some would say no one is, even-- this has much impact in the minds of readers. Often, we cannot fully consider these perspectives because of our lack of empathy and understanding; in turn, providing this perspective is crucial to our thought and understanding of the past. The descriptive imagery works hand-in-hand with this, as the conveyance of the scene is crucial to conveying the understanding. Using terms like “vague before-dawn” and “fields unfold to whiteness” places readers fully in the shoes of the narrator, enabling the empathy within readers to unfurl. The two of these devices are mutually dependent. Without imagery, it is unlikely the perspective would matter as much. Without perspective, the imagery would lead to no empathy. Discovering this relationship is key to seeing how woven together the devices and choices Dove made within “The House Slave” are. In doing so, we can fully view the impact of this poem and begin to dissect exactly what makes it that way.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that with your analysis of this poem in terms of the impact that it has. I think all the poems in this section were written for the sole purpose of educating and making people aware of the things that went on during these times in American history, as they point out a lot of atrocities that were committed against these people, but some also allow for a sense of hope, like in "Belinda's Petition". There is a lot of visual imagery in this poem that makes the reader sympathize with the slaves in this poem. I thought that the most impactful line of this poem was the last one, "I weep. It is not yet daylight". It shows how hopeless these people were, and how they have already had to endure a lot and the day hasn't even began.
DeleteIn Rita Dove’s “The Abduction”, Dove describes the life of freed man Solomon Northup, specifically the events where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. There are five stanzas in the poem, each decreasing a line every stanza, so it is a quintet followed by a quatrain, triplet, couplet, and a single line at the end. Along with the stanzas growing progressively shorter as the poem continues, the subject becomes more grim and loses the initial cheerful tone. In the first stanza, Solomon Northup is jubilant and excited; he believed he was going to join his friends and make good money working with them. “The bells, the cannons, the houses black with crepe, / all for the great Harrison! / The citizenry of Washington clotted the avenue--I among them, Solomon Northup / from Saratoga Springs, free papers in my pocket, violin / under arm, my new friends Brown and Hamilton by my side.” It’s as if Northup’s excitement is tangible through his long statements, similar to when a person starts speaking in run-on sentences out of their own sheer effervescence. However, by the last line of the poem, the sentence is short and concise, “I woke and found myself alone, in darkness and in chains.” This describes Northup recovering from the drug and realizing that he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Although “in darkness” could just represent the dark environment he had been contained in, the phrase also represents how he was in the dark and unknowing about where he was, why he was there. The fourth stanza also shares the same connotation as the last. “I floated on water I could not drink. Though the pillow / was stone, I climbed no ladders in that sleep.” The second line in the stanza portrays how Northup was stuck on the last rung and as a newly slave, he was unable to advance in the social ladder and become the same person that he had been prior to his kidnapping, freed, professional, and content.
ReplyDeleteYour point about the stanzas and the role of format stands out as a great comment about the poem. I noticed it as well, while reading, but the initial thing that helped me notice was just the general tone shift. Often, when we read pieces like this, we can feel the change, yet we don't always know what causes it. The form in this poem acts in a very similar way: a subtle change yet one with great impact. Upon further analysis, we can and do recognize and realize the methodology by which these changes are accomplished, and that, within the scope of "The Abduction," is what truly helps the piece flow and feel how it does.
DeleteIn the poem “The Abduction” by Rita Dove, Dove uses an allusion to Solomon Northup to illustrate his story. Northrup’s story is illustrated most famously by the movie Twelve Years A Slave, he was the son of a freed slave, and so he lived a fairly good life, he too was free and he played the violin, “... Solomon Northrup/ from Saratoga Springs, free papers in my pocket, violin/ under arm…” (3-5). His story continues as he befriends a couple of men, who in turn invite him to a party, and he starts to drink, “I remember how the windows rattled with each report/ Then the wine, like a pink lake, tipped,” (10-11). He has started to feel not very good for he had been drugged, and when he had woken up he was not the same man anymore, “I woke and found myself alone, in darkness and in chains,” (15). When he woke up he was in chains and his life had been turned around, his so called “friends” had turned him in and claimed he was a runaway slave. Due to this, Northrup, a free man, had become a slave for twelve years until he was finally freed again and was then allowed to return home to his family. I noticed that the stanzas kept on growing shorter as it went along, and it become a little more depressing with each one. The first two stanza has a tone of excitement, and then there is a shift in tone with the third stanza. This makes the reader anticipate something bad, and that is exactly what happens. Dove uses her art to communicate many different things, and that is something that can obviously be seen with these poems. She uses allusions to various other slaves, or abolitionists to demonstrate the atrocities commited to them. Especially in the case of Solomon Northrup, who was abducted and then forced to be a slave, only because he kind of resembled a slave who had ran away. It goes to show how the “times were tough”, it shows how horribly they were treated and how little respect they were given. Racism still existed, even if they were free people. It makes the reader think about these things that have happened in American history, and allows us to reflect.
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