Dusting

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

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Poem Analysis

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Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“Promises” by Rita Dove (1986)

This poem appears immediately before “Dusting” in Thomas and Beulah (1986). “Promises” follows Beulah on her wedding day, taking her perspective. For Beulah, marriage is a strange ritual. The day goes as planned, but the whole experience is marked by off-kilter descriptions, such as the “meadow of virgins” (Line 21) at the bouquet toss, or the guests throwing “rice drumming / the both of them blind” (Lines 25-26). The poem foreshadows the ambiguous depiction of Beulah‘s married life in “Dusting,” where it is implied that married life has not provided her with the happiness she hoped for. The link above provides an audio version of the poem.

“Free Verses” by Sarah Kirsch, trans. Rita Dove (1998)

Dove published several translated or co-translated poems in the October-November 1998 issue of Poetry Magazine. The title of the poem is a pun. Read one way, it describes the form: the poem itself, like much of Dove’s own writing, is unmetered and unrhymed. Read another way, it describes the premise: after a nighttime epiphany, the speaker decides to “say goodbye” (Line 2) to their precious verses, releasing them to fend for themselves. Translating from German, Dove captures Kirsch’s dry humor for an English-speaking audience in plain poetic language:

It’s not possible to keep them

Forever! here under the roof.

Poor things. They must set out for town.

A few will be allowed to return later (Lines 5-8).

“Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou (1983)

Subtle caged bird imagery appears throughout Beulah’s section of Thomas and Beulah. Her section is titled “Canary in Bloom,” and the color yellow appears in several poems. Beulah and the caged bird in this poem are both trapped, and both of them chase freedom. In “Dusting,” Beulah escapes the captivity of her life by revisiting happy memories from her past. In Angelou’s poem, the caged bird attempts to escape by singing about the freedom it has never known, but still longs for.

“Harlem” by Langston Hughes

This is the most famous poem from Hughes’s book of poems about life in Midcentury Harlem, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). Taking rhythmic inspiration from jazz music, this book is a formally varied collection of poems all centered on one moment in time, much like Dove’s Thomas and Beulah (1986).

Further Literary Resources

Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove (1986)

“Dusting” appears in the poetry collection Thomas and Beulah, in the second section, “Canary in Bloom.” This section follows the couple’s lives from Beulah’s perspective. On its own, “Dusting” implies things about Beulah’s relationship with her husband and father, but these characters are much clearer and more complex in the context of the complete story.

Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove (1988)

This hour-long educational film features archival photographs of Dove’s maternal grandparents. Dove surveys the book from beginning to end. She performs select poems from Thomas and Beulah with supporting background information and commentary. At the conclusion of the film and the book, Dove comments on the seemingly bleak state of things: “I think that Thomas and Beulah were both very strong and sensitive people who lived heroic lives” (58:44).

Interview with Rita Dove by Camille T. Dungy and Rita Dove (2005)

Poet and Professor Camille T. Dungy interviews Dove for Callaloo Literary Journal. Dungy asks Dove about her then-latest book, American Smooth (W. W. Norton & Co, 2004), her relationship to history, her writing process, and the contemporary poetry landscape.

“A Politics of Mere Being” by Carl Phillips (2016)

This article by poet and Professor Carl Phillips appeared in the December 2016 issue of Poetry magazine. Phillips, a gay African American man, disputes the notion that his identities automatically make his poetry political, or that he has to write a certain way for his politics to be taken seriously. Phillips performs a critical reading of the first section of Dove’s first book, The Yellow House on the Corner, to show how one poet’s work can embody several identities and explore them on their own terms: “It’s a rejection of the simplification of identity and instead an instancing—an enactment—of being as not only mere, but wildly various.”

Listen to Poem

Rita Dove reads “Dusting”

Rita Dove reads her poem for a film about her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Thomas and Beulah (1986). “Dusting” begins at the 37:36 mark in the video.