Dusting by Rita Dove

Dusting

by Rita Dove

Every day a wilderness—no

shade in sight. Beulah

patient among knicknacks,

the solarium a rage

of light, a rainstorm

as her gray cloth brings

dark wood to life.

Under her hand scrolls

and crests gleam

darker still. What

was his name, that

silly boy at the fair with

the rifle booth? And his kiss and

the clear bowl with one bright

fish, rippling

wound!

Not Michael—

something finer. Each dust

stroke a deep breath and

the canary in bloom.

Wavery memory: home

from a dance, the front door

blown open and the parlor

in snow, she rushed

the bowl to the stove, watched

as the locket of ice

dissolved and he

swam free.

That was years before

Father gave her up

with her name, years before

her name grew to mean

Promise, then

Desert-in-Peace.

Long before the shadow and

sun's accomplice, the tree.

Maurice.

This wonderful poem about nostalgia and how it can sneak up on you is from Rita Dove's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Thomas and Beulah. The book is a fictionalized account of her maternal grandparents. It was published in 1986 and was one of the (or maybe it was THE) first poetry collections by a single author that I bought on my own. I was not in school--I was working and paying off school loans. Money was tight. But after reading a couple of poems in the bookstore, I had to have this book! I have been a fan ever since.

The first stanza hints at troubles with its language and images: no shade in sight, rage, rainstorm. But Beulah is revitalizing the furniture just by dusting. This mix of bad with good sets the tone and the theme of the entire poem.

While doing this mundane chore, she suddenly remembers something in the second stanza. Well, half remembers. At first, all she recalls is "that silly boy at the fair," then "the rifle booth." The memory continues to clear: they kissed and--we are assuming here--he won her a goldfish in a bowl. Even the goldfish, a fond memory, is kept in check by Dove's language; it is describing as a rippling (that's fine for a fish) wound (okay--the color and the shape but also a little troubling).

The memory continues, but his name still eludes her. Beulah continues to dust and Dove describes another memory (although it is wavery--what a great word--it fits both our unreliable memories and fish), that of returning from a dance and having to unlock the fish from ice. Again, we need to assume here that the dance date was this mysterious boy. And again, we have the mix of a happy event (the dance), the bad (a house so cold it froze the fishbowl water), and Beulah saving the fish, as she does when dusting wood and as she is trying to do with this boy's memory.

We learn in the 4th stanza that all of this happened long ago, before she married and changed her name. The last sentence tells us a number of things. Two seemingly opposite things can be connected. There is both darkness and happiness in her life now. The tree at the end, the very important last word, harkens back to the beginning--not just a wildness, but also the dusting of wood. One is natural and free and the other is dead and useful. And with that, she recalls the boy's name: Maurice.

The importance of both the memoryof him/ his name and her ability to remember it is fairly blatant. Maurice is its/his own line, own stanza, and italizcized. Just like a memory one is trying to recall and then it is suddenly there. Eureka!

And that's it. The poem stops there but the fact that it does stop means Beulah does not run off to find Maurice. She keeps on dusting. Her current life/marriage may be troubling in some ways, housework can be fulfilling but it is not life-altering, but she is content with her memory, whole now that she has the boy's name.

Rita Dove has won a bazillion awards and, besides being a great poet, she is also a musician, a singer, and--with her husband--a ballroom dancer. She is originally from Ohio and was the U.S. Poet Laureate.