Rita Dove Daystar

One thing that each of Dove’s poems all share is a meaning. For example, “Thomas and Beulah” symbolizes her grandparents. Growing up Dove remained positive and enjoyed literature like her parents enforced. Not knowing that their simple directions would lead her into a positive successful outcome in her life. Leading her to be able to learn what she loves at three different Universities, and then teaching students what she loves at Arizona State.

The notion that ordinary, everyday experiences encompass universal emotions of both sadness and delight is central to Gwen Harwood’s anthology of Selected Poems. This Australian poet often uses her personal journey towards self-knowledge and experience of growing up to comment on universal aspects of raw, uncensored life experiences. She aims to convey the idea that motherhood is a difficult experience for many women who resent the way they are forced to abandon their individuality and careers. Harwood also illustrates the sadness in the loss of innocence and regrets in childhood. However, she also reminds the audience of the importance of celebrating the richness and vitality of human life such as the importance and power of women and parenthood. Ultimately the collection also suggests that aspects of both sadness and delight are evident in every human experience.

The poetic form and structure of Dove's poem is important in portraying Dove's theme of coping with death. The poem is made up of three octets, a couplet, and a quatrain. Having the couplet right after three octets abruptly disrupts the flow of the poem, similarly to how an individual's life can feel as though it has stopped after a death has occurred. However, the quatrain shows that even after that abrupt disruption, life will still go on. In addition, the lineation helps emphasize the concept of death to the reader. For example, when describing the launch of "The Akron," Dove ends several of her lines with words that are associated with life and death situations such as, adrenalin, fell, clawing, and dropped. Together,

“Daystar” comes from a book of poems written by Dove entitled Thomas and Beulah, which tells both the real and unreal stories of Dove’s maternal grandparents (Stein 64). Unlike Dove, who grew up during a time of women’s rights, her grandmother most likely did not have an admired career as a housewife. In discussing Thomas and Beulah, Stein explains, “It is almost painful to witness Thomas and Beulah, two people clearly devoted to each other, continually misinterpret each other's behavior” (70). Although “Daystar” is not necessarily written from an autobiographical perspective, Dove is using the research of her family and her own experiences to welcome us into the lives of the distressed Beulah.

“Daystar” by Rita Dove is an expressive poem, which centers on the main character, a young mother and wife, who internally struggles with her burdensome, daily duties, which creates a lack of freedom in her world.   Dove’s choice of words lets the reader empathize with her confined life.  In this poem, irony exists for the mere fact that from birth to adulthood the female population is brought up to feel fulfilled by simply becoming a wife and mother; however, this poem describes the monotonous duties and the joyless bond that can be between husband and wife.

Symbolisation is also used to counteract the miserable life of an Australian housewife. This can be seen in the line “She practises a fugue, though it can matter to no one now if she plays well or not, (stanza one, line one).” This line suggests that the woman portrayed is a musician. The poem latter reads, “Once she played for Rubinstein, who yawned,” (stanza one, line nine). This suggests she was talented enough to present to Rubenstein but didn’t succeed. “The children caper, round a sprung mousetrap where a mouse lies dead.” This line symbolizes the housewife. Her dreams of becoming a musician are trapped within her own environment. This same line can also evaluate the difficulties and harshness of the urban Australian life. Seeming sad this is something that is exciting to the children.

This shows the love that her mother had and how she was always caring for her child. The coffin and the number “82” symbolises the age that mother was upon her death, shown in lines 21 and 22 which state “You left the world so, having lived nearly thirty thousand days”, the daughter wanted her mother to live a longer life, which is why she says “I prayed you would live to see Halley’s comment a second time.” on lines 17 and 18. The last image of the hands clasped together symbolises the strength of their relationship and strong bond between mother and daughter.The two photos of the women crying and the quote “After all this time… I still miss you every day” show that although the mother has died the strong bond that exists between a mother and her daughter will never die and that she still remains very much alive in her daughters memory. Lines 25, 26 and 27 “At our last meeting I closed the ward door of heavy glass between us…”, symbolises the end of their time together on earth and this was the last time she saw her mother

Daystar by Rita Dove emphasizes gender roles and the expectations society has towards being a mother. It is often believed that mothers should assume responsibility for cooking, cleaning, tending to their demanding children and husbands. The poem illustrates the challenges women endure to live up to society’s expectations to be a fit mother and wife. As seen through the main character mothers have to make sacrifices that often puts everyone else’s happiness before their own. For example, the women in the poem desired to have time to herself but she couldn’t because she had endless chores and children to care for. Not having time to herself made her feel lost and unfulfilled.

Harwood wrote the poem with relatively simple composition techniques but it provides a rather big impact which helps to give an insight into the life of a mother or nurturer which bares the burdens of children.

At this point the poet uses symbolism substituting a flower for his mother. This is an appropriate symbol as, like his mother, a flower is feminine, delicate and

There are many devices used in this poem to emphasize the emotions going through the mind of a parent when sending their child off into the world. Of such device used is imagery, the use of imagery is used abundantly in the

In exploring this poem the tone of the opening line – “Abortions will not let you forget” – can be viewed as regretful and as offering a kind of warning. As we move through the poem the tone of line four, might be called literally imaginative, as she say; “The singers and workers that never handled the air”. While in lines 5-6 the tone seems at first brutally honest and realistic and then affectionate and realistic. As she continues to lines 7-10, as well as in many lines of this poem, the mother expresses herself as a person who is fully familiar with all the small, subtle realities of parenting. She even expresses her attitudes toward her abortions even more complex.

In the poem Plath is showing her hatred for her father. Plath uses tone to describes her strict, heartless father, but also describes him as “no less a devil” desperate to disremember him. Plath also uses Symbolism to show the distastes she has for her father. In the Poem she compares her father to Hitler stating “I have always been afraid of you, with your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo . And your neat mustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man” (41-45). This shows that her father was an authoritarian who showed little to no feeling and love toward her. Another example of symbolism is when Plath compares herself to a Jew. She was explaining that her life was like she was in a concentration camp “chuffing me like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began talking like a Jew, I think that I might as well be a Jew” (32-34).

The imagery shows the main point of the poem which is children going through a tough time when they are not supposed to and all they can do is cry at the moment. A symbolism that was found in the poem was the death of alice. The death of alice symbolize joy because Alice was able to escape the tough time children had to face. It says in line 54 “ death in life as best to have” this indicates that many of the children rather die because it is their only escape from child labor.

Linda Pastan made this poem include various forms of figurative language to hide the literal message that it's trying to portray. Figurative language is using figures of speech to make the text be more powerful, persuasive, and meaningful. Figures of speech such as, similes and metaphors, go beyond the literal meanings to give the readers a new way of looking at the text. It can come in multiple ways with different literacy and rhetorical devices such as: alliteration, imageries, onomatopoeias, and etc. With the usage of the literary devices Pastan has used, it introduced the relationship between the mother and the daughter. It shows the memories of how the mother helped her daughter grow from a little girl to a young adult getting ready to go her own way in life.