11/23/2023 0 Comments Adolescence rita dove![]() Their light color represents the positive. The man comes with “white rabbits in arms” (2), which are symbols of healing and life. The speaker is presumably lovesick, but the presence of love brings her back to health. This poem is about a sickly woman, who is cured by a man’s love. Once he’s healed, and the two of them go back to the secret garden, and all of the flowers are in full bloom. In the book, Mary Lennox, who moves from India to England, and is thus an outsider, helps a little boy named Colin back to health, teaching him how to walk again in her secret garden after he’s been crippled of a number of years. The title of this poem is a reference to the novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. When you came with tomatoes, a good poetry.īy a cliff of limestone that leaves chalk on my breasts. I was sick, fainting in the smell of teabags, The cauliflower thinks of her pale, plump childrenĪnd turns greenish-white in a light like the ocean’s. Now your tongue grows like celery between us:īecause of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its nest When you came with white rabbits in your arms Īnd the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers,Īnd the snails sighed under their baggage of stone. I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, She, like so many women of color before her, was heavily impacted by what happened to her. The punctuation is succinct, showing how much thought and time the speaker put into telling this story. ![]() The way the stanzas are in tercets is very calculated, representing each of the three rapists. This poem speaks to the horrors of rape, especially in women of color. The speaker’s rapists silence her, even though she wants to say something. Furthermore, if there is a ball of fur on her tongue, she would not be able to speak. The final line, “Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue” (15) implies that this memory is something she wants to get rid of, but can’t seem to free herself of it a ball of fur in one’s mouth would certainly be uncomfortable. She says, “I clutch the ragged holes/ They Leave behind, here at the edge of darkness” (13-14), which shows how these men have destroyed her, how they’ve left their mark on her, how she’ll never forget what has happened. The fact that the speaker says “pools of ink” implies that the men are of color.Īlthough they are physically gone, the speaker still feels their presence. The men leave, “Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight” (12), which refers to the sweat dripping down their bodies, as they have just finished raping her. After she doesn’t respond, one man says, “Well, maybe next time” (11), which tells the speaker that they will be back again, that her experience with them is not over. The fact that she doesn’t know what to say shows that she is not engaging in sex happily, but rather, out of necessity. The men ask the speaker if she can “feel it yet” (8), wondering if she is finally enjoying the sex. She probably knows the men personally maybe they are family or friends. The “tiles quiver in pale strips” (3) represent her fear of what is coming-she knows these rapes are coming. ![]() The speaker refers to her “baby-breasts” (2), meaning that she is most likely underage. In this poem, three men rape the speaker in the bathroom. Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue. They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness. Glittering like pools of ink under moonlight, Patting their sleek bodies with their hands. One on the bathtub edge one leans against the door. Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as roundĪs dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines. Venetian blinds slice up the moon the tiles quiver in pale strips. Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert. Dove has received many awards and honors for her beautiful poetry, and currently is a professor at the University of Virginia.Īlthough it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting. Dove won the Pulitzer Prize for her work Thomas and Beulah in 1986 in which she wrote about her grandparents’ relationship and memories living in early 20 th century Ohio. With The Yellow House on the Corner and other works, Dove has been highly commended for her sense of history, lyricism, and political awareness. Dove’s first poetry collection The Yellow House on the Corner was published in 1980. She was an excellent student, graduating high school as a Presidential Scholar and eventually moving on to Miami University of Ohio as a National Merit Scholar. Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio.
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