Rita Dove’s poem, “Daystar”, is one of many poems found in Dove’s poetry sequence entitled “Thomas and Beulah”. “Daystar”, depicts the life of Dove’s grandmother, as her poetry sequence focuses on the lives of her grandparents.
Rita Dove, “A Pulitzer Prize winner, and a former U.S. Poet laureate, is known for exploring issues of family dynamics and African-American identity…” (“Rita Dove”) She was born Rita Frances Dove on August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio to a father who was a chemist and a mother who was a homemaker. Dove’s poetry writing emerged after she graduated high school and began attending Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After she got her bachelors degree with high honors in English, Dove studied in Germany under a scholarship from the U.S. Government. She then came back to the states to earn her masters degree from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. (“Rita Dove”) After earning her masters degree, Dove published the collection “Thomas and Beulah”. The collection, which was focused on the lives of her grandparents, won a Pulitzer Prize. (Erskine)
Dove’s “Daystar”, was published in 1987.Although it was published in 1987, the poem actually took place during the early twentieth century, a time where many woman held the responsibility of being a “wife-mother” (Georgoudaki 427-428). Although women gained equal rights, lower class African-American women were still expected to stay at home and tend to the family.
The twentieth century was the time period of change, for many new inventions and movements that played a significant role in our lives began here. During the early twentieth century, the women’s movement began and women started emphasizing the need for equal rights. Women eventually moved out of t...
... middle of paper ...
...&site=lrc-plus
Georgoudaki, Ekaterini. “Rita Dove: Crossing Boundaries.” Callaloo 14.2 (1991): 419-433. JSTOR. Web. 31 March 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2931640?seq=9&Search=yes&term=crossing&term=boundaries&term=rita&term=dove&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Drita%2Bdove%253Acrossing%2Bboundaries%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don&item=2&ttl=160&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doBasicResultsFromArticle
“Rita Dove.” Contemporary Black Biorgraphy. 2010. Biography Resource Center. Web. 31 March 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=linc clin_vcc&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=1&AI=U13027512&NA=rita+dove&ste=12&tbst=prp&tab=1&docNum=K1606004614&bConts=59
"Women's History in America." Women's International Center. Compton's NewMedia, Inc., 1995. Web. 31 Mar 2010. .
Ms. Angelou left her birth place as a young child after her parents had broken up. Ms. Angelou and her brother were sent to live with her fathers’ Mother in Stamps, Arkansas. Some may call Ms. Angelou’s 1969 autobiography ”I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing” her claim to fame, some may call her poetry her occupation, and more over there are still some that would like to call her Freelance writings Maya Angelou’s life’s work. Ms. Angelou was so much more. Ms. Angelou has been known for being a Civil Rights activist, a poet, a philosopher, a teacher, an Award-winning Author, an actress, a screenwriter and the
The major poets of the early twentieth century tended to reflect in their poetry elements of the rural, agrarian society in which they lived, much of their work focused on traditional American values and yet foreshadowed the changing character of America, hinting at the factors that ushered the changes of the twentieth century: war, urbanization, technological development, increased mobility, and the emergence of minority voices in culture. Edgar Lee Masters indited 243 poems about the people buried in the Spoon River?s Cemetery, which is where the poem Lucinda Matlock came from. Each character speaks from the grave about his own epigraph. Lucinda lived a very long life of ninety-six years. From what Masters conveyed in his poem, it seemed like Lucinda enjoyed her life and was very satisfied with everything she had accomplished.
Matthews, Glenna. "Gibson, Althea." American Women's History: A Student Companion. Dec. 1 2000: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.
Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo.
Maya Angelou was one of America’s greatest writers in history. She was known for her many writings and for her part in Civil Rights Movements. Maya Angelou went through many hardships during her childhood, the most prevalent of those, racism over her skin color. This racism affected where she grew up, where she went to school, even where she got a job. “My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drops s’s from plurals and suffixes from past tense verbs.” (Angelou 221) Maya Angelou was a strong believer in a good education and many of those beliefs were described in her
Smith, J, & Phelps, S (1992). Notable Black American Women, (1st Ed). Detroit, MI: Gale
In the perspective as an African American woman, Maya Angelou speaks of the issue of sexism in her poem. In this quote, “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies…”, Angelou sheds light on the problems women faced during her time. Many had to also face the discrimination from men as men control them and put words in women’s mouths. This indicates the doubled amount of burden that African American women had to go through and it was important for Maya Angelou to speak of this issue through literature and give a voice to women who were struggling with the same conflicting situations. In contrast, Hughes’s, “I, Too,” poem states the African American inequality more generally than Angelou’s
Leonard, K. D. (2009). African American women poets and the power of the word. The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature, 168-187.
Women’s rights have been a concern around the World since almost forever. The biggest advances in these rights, though, happened in America. For almost two hundred years, give or take some breaks, women have been doing what they could to advance their rights. Women did more to expand their rights before and during WWII, though. They spread their message by holding protests, stepping outside of the boundaries given to them, and reaching out to other women.
Women’s role in society changed quite a bit during WWI and throughout the 1920s. During the 1910s women were very short or liberty and equality, life was like an endless rulebook. Women were expected to behave modestly and wear long dresses. Long hair was obligatory, however it always had to be up. It was unacceptable for them to smoke and they were expected to always be accompanied by an older woman or a married woman when outing. Women were usually employed with jobs that were usually associated with their genders, such as servants, seamstresses, secretaries and nursing. However during the war, women started becoming employed in different types of jobs such as factory work, replacing the men who had gone to fight in the war in Europe. In the late 1910s The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had been fighting for decades to get the vote for women. As women had contributed so much to the war effort, it was difficult to refuse their demands for political equality. As a result, the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution became law in 19...
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
Marguerite Anne Johnson, better known as Maya Angelou, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was born and raised in an era that involved the Great Depression and World War I. When her parents divorced at a young age, she and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother in a heavily racially segregated Stamps , Arkansas. She found solace in her brother, Bailey, in the hard times produced by the South. This segregation was severe in this era, especially for shy young Marguerite. Throughout her childhood, she was sent from her grandmother to her father and mother. All these different environments exposed Angelou to a series of experiences including: racism, segregation, music, and politics. These experiences were most likely what prompted her to chronicle her life through autobiographical works as well as poems. In these works, Angelou utilizes elements such as literary devices, poetic devices, allusions, recurring themes and symbols to portray
Rita Dove was the youngest person and the first African-American ever named Poet Laureate of the United States. Much of Dove's work concentrates on revealing the beauty and significance of everyday events in ordinary lives. In "The Yellow House on the Corner (1980)" and "Museum (1983)", she shows how such moments make up individuals' history and add to the experiences that human beings share. That explains why she wrote a poem called The Cane Fields. The Cane Fields was about a group of Haitian soldiers who was attacked by the dictator of the Dominican Republic because they could not roll their r's in the word Perijil on Oct 2, 1957. In the story there was a phrase used frequently which was "a parrot imitates spring" meaning, the parrot was a symbol of something beautiful and represented peace.
Maya Angelou was a highly skilled poet who used her writer’s voice to strengthen and guide civil rights. Angelou was born in St. Louis on the 4th of April, 1928 and is still currently writing (bio.com). A victim of sexual assault, Angelou spent years after as a virtual mute (poetryfoundation.org). Facing racial prejudice and discrimination through all her youth, a lot of her works were centred around prejudice and civil rights (poetryfoundation.org). Angelou is a strong civil rights activist and her writings such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings certainly reflect that. Angelou was an influential and passionate person with strong motives . Angelou was the first African-American woman to have a non-fiction bestseller, impacting the literature world (bio.com). Angelou was a coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to bolster civil rights (poetryfoundation.com). Overall, Angelou’s works have affected not only poetry but fr...
In the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth, this difference between children and adults and their respective states of mind is articulated and developed. As a person ages, they move undeniably from childhood to adulthood, and their mentality moves with them. On the backs of Blake and Wordsworth, the reader is taken along this journey.