Dusting - Poem by Rita Dove

Dove's strongest feminist commentary derives from the housewife's private burden in "Dusting," the poet's most analyzed, anthologized poem. Keeping physically
and mentally busy, Beulah challenges a nagging despair with fantasy. While hands combat the "grainstorms" with a gray dustrag, her mind flies free of
housewifery to ponder the name of a boy who kissed her at the fair. Was it Michael? As though polishing her life, she rubs the furniture to a bright shine. Too late,
an answer comes to her — Maurice, an exotic not-Thomas kind of name. In subsequent entries, Dove pursues her grandmother's emotional displacement. The grit
of "Dusting" returns in the form of "Nightmare," a twenty-four-line torment that ends with a memory of her mother's cry — "you'll ruin us" — for opening an umbrella
indoors, a violation of folkways.

The verse cycle closes with "The Oriental Ballerina," a shifting, iridescent picture story centering on the dancing figurine that spins and dips atop a jewelry box
more suited to budding women than old ladies. Beulah, aged and widowed, lies in a ghost-ridden room and perceives the dancer as a Chinese woman on the
opposite side of the globe, where "they do everything upside down." Her association of classical ballet with Asia rather than France, where it began, suggests that
her knowledge of culture is limited.

With the skill of a pointillist painter, Dove daubs the remains of her grandmother's memories on a verbal canvas with too-candid flashes — "papered in vulgar
flowers," "background the color of grease," and a disheartening reminder that the veneer of Beulah's existence can never rise above "cracked imitation walnut."
The details anchor the room in a humdrum, working-class environment. Obviously, Beulah has few treasures to feed her fantasy.

The aged speaker is left husbandless and bedfast beside crumpled, camphor-soaked tissues and an invalid's straw poking out of the glass like an accusing finger.
Beyond Beulah's idealism of a petite dancer atwirl on her toes, the poet remarks, "the rest is shadow." Yet, bright rays against dull walls explode the invalid's
limited view into reflected patterns. Like theatrical light tricks, a dazzling transformation spatters the dismal room with "shabby tutus." The sun-fed illusion becomes
the poet's blessing on a failing grandparent whose memory retains all that is left of a marriage. Still capable of fleeing place and body, Beulah thrives on the active
fantasy that sustained her from early marriage through widowhood to the receding boundaries of her life.