The Poetry Of Rita Dove's 'Geometry'

From a small town in Ohio to becoming one of the worlds most famous poets, Rita Dove has changed the way poetry was written. Dove uses her unique skill to describe the complex subjects of the mind and imagination. In one of her most famous poems, "Geometry," Dove recalls a childhood memory and relates it to problem solving, the feeling of discovery and the longing to learn more.

Rita Dove was born on August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio. Rita came from a family of hard workers, who fought to make their dreams come true. Her father became the first African American chemist, working for Goodyear. Books were a common sight in the Dove household. Rita's strict parents limited the time Rita and her siblings could watch television. As a substitute, the Dove children often checked out books from the library to keep themselves entertained. Rita showed a love for writing at an early age. She often wrote stories and plays for her classmates, and authored a comic book with her older brother. Rita graduated high school as a Presidential Scholar, one of the top one hundred students in the country.

Rita attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio as a National Merit Scholar. She pursued a career in writing and graduated with a Bachelors degree in English in 1973. The following year, Dove received a Fulbright, which allowed her to study at the University of Tubingen in Germany. “Her travel in Europe and elsewhere suggests part of the imperative she feels as a poet: to range widely through fields of experience, to cross boundaries of space as well as time” (Baym 2809). She met her husband, Fred Viebahn while at the university. The two were married in 1979, and in 1983, had a daughter named Aviva Chantel.

In 1980, Dove published her first poetry book,...

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...round us. This line states the final step of this process, to go out and learn.

In the last line of the final stanza, she writes that "they are going to some point true and unproven" (Dove). "The last line of the poem suggests that there is much more still to be discovered" (Poetry for Students). Through this line, Dove describes the natural curiosity the mind has. She reminds us that we can learn many as many things as we want, but there will always be something we won't know.

Geometry “[is] displaced, on the border between different worlds…” (Baym 2810). It is not only a common high school math class, but also an allegory for the mind. Dove took a simple childhood event and related it to the minds expansion as it becomes aware of the world around it. She uses her famous technique of moving through space to show the house disappearing and an open world appearing.