Shannon Wareham
Yee
English B Honors 11
March 31, 2014
Rita Dove the Determined Poet
There were political and social issues for black African American’s occurring during the
time the poet Rita Dove was growing up. This is why those political and social issues in the
1950’s and 1960’s influenced her writing in the poems she wrote. Specific events included
African American and Women’s Rights. Back in that era of the 1950’s and 1960’s, African
Americans were fighting desperately for their rights that the believed they deserved for a long
time. The women in this time period were trying to bring up their roles in society and to have a
bigger voice in politics. Rita Dove not only writes her poems in her point of view, she also writes
them in opposing and different ethnicity views as well.
Events that were happening that affected Rita’s work was the Korean War, Civil Rights
movement and Women’s rights. The African Americans protested their lack of civil rights by
staging peaceful, non-violent sit-ins, and strikes on public facilities only serving whites. In
contrast the whites took their peaceful rioting into violent persecutions. Rita Dove puts this
political issue into one of her poems called “Lady Freedom Among Us”. It states that they “Will
not tire politely to the potter’s field… she’s not going to budge…she is each of us.”(lines 27-32)
The girl in the poem is Lady Freedom. This is important because it shows that the African
Americans were not going to give up until they had what they were fighting for since they were
released from slavery 170 years ago They use their character Lady freedom to fight. All of them
together represent freedom. With that sentence they are saying, we are free from slavery now
give us our Civil Rights. Technically, they were free in the sense that they were not slaves
anymore, but in reality they were restricted in so many things that they might as well sit there
and do nothing. Along with the civil rights battle in this time period there was the serious Korean
War that had an impact on the public especially for the Korean Americans. They were hated and
persecuted by the other Americans because America had feared communism. We were fighting
against North Korea to contain communism there and keep communism out of the South. We as
Americans felt it was our job to be the police men of the world to contain communism. This
issue related to Rita Dove’s poem “EXIT”. This poem is told from a Korean immigrant’s point
of view on the issue at hand. “Just when hope withers…clean of people…This suitcase the
saddest object in the world.” (lines 1-9)This is the Koreans being kicked out of their homes by
the government because of America’s paranoia of communism spreading. This suitcase is an
object of sadness because to the Koreans it doesn’t mean vacation it means leaving and who
knows if they come back. From there you can depict that these people had no happiness or hope.
Their whole street was empty and lifeless and they had no choice whether they wanted to leave
or not, they had to leave with no fight. This shows Rita’s compassion towards the Korean
immigrants. Instead of following the crowd she is thoughtful and pity’s them because she knows
what it is like to be rejected and not to have rights. This is a comparison to African Americans
and Korean immigrant’s in America having the same problem with political representation. The
last major political issue was the Women having setbacks in the work force. While World War II
was happening Women were able to have jobs in all ranking because men were gone and
someone needed to fill in those positions. After the War all the men came back and there were
two different points of view of the work force. The first was the men and some of the women felt
that the women should release their jobs and let men be in the work force. The other point of
view contrasting that was, the women wanted to keep their jobs and continue working in the
work force. In some cases it was necessary for both parents to work to financially support the
family. The other cases were that women wanted more representation in the work force. In Rita’s
poem “My Mother Enters the Work Force” she explains in this poem what she saw and learned
from her mother with a job. Here it says “Qualified seamstress…never puckered—puffed or
sleek…no more postponed groceries and that blue pair of shoes!” (lines 3,24) This is an example
of family life in most American families. She was fortunate enough to have some luxuries as a
family and to be African American. Most black families lived in a lower class state or just barely
into the middle class. IN this era people generally lived better because they have been saving all
through the World War and now that it was over they could spend it. So, this helped the
economy, which led to more job openings for women to take.
With political issues what most commonly follow are social issues. The biggest and most
major issue was segregation. The main phrase that went along with segregation (as the whites put
it) was “Separate, but equal”. Well that wasn’t that case at all coming down to the facilities
blacks had to use. The white’s facilities were always better than the colored people. This goes
along with Dove’s poem “The Palaces of Versailles”. The main theme in here contradicts the
main theme all the whites thought. The theme is “Separate, but NOT equal”. This poem is told
from a female African American point of view and also from a white persons point of view. In
The poem it declares that “Nothing nastier than a white person…Swamp she born from, swamp
she swallow…French ladies…lifting shy layers of silk…wearing powder and perfume”. (Lines130) The black woman expresses her resentment towards white people. She describes the luxuries
they have and the how the black people get none. To white people all black people are scum and
live in dumpy places. That really isn’t the black peoples fault, because the whites are the ones
that put them there in the first place and wouldn’t allow them anywhere else. That is one point
that the racist whites did not comprehend. We point out their poor and unsophisticated living
when we have given them zero opportunity in allowing them to have nice things as we did. Rita
Dove believed like that since she was African American and grew up in these types of situations.
Another social problem was society’s definition of love. This affects women more than anything.
Most women, seek for companionship because some never want to be alone. In the 1950’s1960’s it was a social status to be married, they even had the couples marry a lot younger than
they had been. Also, introduced into this time period was the Birth Control pill. It was rejected at
first, but it soon became quite popular to use. Some women didn’t go along with the fad and still
rejected it. There were two different types of people with love or feelings. There are the lovey,
dovey ones that all they do is hug, kiss, and cuddle, they also express their feelings from the
heart. Then you have the uncompassionate and iffy people of love that think the heart is only an
organ in our body. In the poem “Heart to Heart” Rita gives the point of view of how people
describe the heart to what it does not actually do even though it feels like it. An excerpt from the
poem declares that “Neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it
can’t feel pain yearning, or regret…it’s just a thick clutch of muscle”(lines 1-7). Those
descriptions are what people say what happens to our heart when a certain emotional reaction
happens to that person. You hear one if not more of these every other day. Rita makes the point
that it is just a muscle in our body, but people have turned it into to more and associating it with
love. The last social issue was the push of the white Americans for no civil rights for blacks. This
subject also ties in with segregation. As mentioned before the Whites considered themselves
above the African American population and pushed for separate facilities everywhere, and they
meant separate. If one white bathroom was in the mall then the black one was clear on the other
side or not even in the mall at all. Blacks were persecuted for protesting and even beat up for
doing so. In “Wingfoot Lake” this is where Rita shows how desperate African Americans were
to be included into society. “Shown her, her first swimming pool…white arms jutting into
chevrons of high society…the white street of government…had locked their back door” They
didn’t have fancy or nice things because they were black. They had to lock their doors at night
because whites would come in and burn their houses down because they were black.
Even though Rita, was colored she still had her wild imagination that wasn’t affected by
the war. It was affected by the persecution though. There was also, her longing to be a part of
society and play with the white boys and girls. Also, along with the fact that she was growing up
to be a women in this era. There were more tough times ahead for her to handle with all the
attributes put together. Rita’s imagination was the one thing the discriminative whites could not
take away from her. Since Rita was a little kid while growing up in this era she still has seen a lot
for a young girl to experience. She would ask her mother “Why can’t I go play at the water
park?” her mother would reply “Because we are not allowed there. That was the hardest thing
her mother had to tell her. It was because it’s sad your daughter can’t have fun and must be
separated from the world that is revolving around her. So Rita had to rely on her imagination to
have fun because she was shut out from all the fancy White people only facilities. Rita wrote a
poem called “The Secret Garden” in this poem it portrays her imagination as a kid and how she
thought she was special because had made up a secret place. In the poem it says “You came with
white rabbits in your arms…doves scattered upwards…cabbage darkens in its nest…I am being
wooed.” She made her imaginative garden the way she wanted to be. She used a number of
similes in this poem to help you visualize what her secret place would look like. Along with her
imagination of secret places there was also her imagination of being herself and being able to
play where the white kids could. Since everything was segregated she couldn’t go to all the fun
places they had only for white children. That’s all she ever wanted to. In her poem “Golden
Oldie” she expresses her feelings on being excluded and shut out from everything she wanted to
do. “By a young girl dying to feel alive…like a blind pianist caught in a tune meant for more
than two hands playing”. Here you can see that she is just waiting to be able to enjoy and live
life. She puts a simile in the poem to show her readers what the frustration was like for kids of all
ages feeling left out or stuck. All along the road of hardship being black there was also the
hardship of being black and a women. Like mentioned above women were losing some
credibility in the work force unless they absolutely had to because they needed to support their
family in the process. Even with this valid reason they were still shut out. In Rita’s poem “EXIT”
it gives you a hint of what it was like to be a woman. “Sky begins to blush as you did when your
mother told you what it took to be a woman in this life.” So here it shows that you would be
having a tough time ahead if you were a woman. You would because you have fewer rights. That
was society’s role for women you, were expected to stay home and tend the children, you were
considered lower than men, if you were black and a woman you were not only considered lower
than white men you were also below white women and black men. You were basically at the
bottom of the food chain in society’s separation.
These are all the situations that people in America had to deal with. Most of the problems
were against the black people, but there were other racisms too. Rita Dove grew up in these
whirlwind of issues and she was able to become the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress. Which is a big accomplishment compared to the situation in which she was
raised. This shows that the political and social problems occurring in the 1950’s and 1960’s
influenced Rita Dove’s writing and made her the poet she is today.