Rita Dove Three Seal Men
Rita Dove was born in Akron Ohio on August 28, 1952. Although she has African American descent, she has lived in America the majority of her life. Dove has been writing poetry and other works of writing since 1980, making her a contemporary poet. She has attended Tubingen University in West Germany. There she met her husband, Fred Viebahn. Dove has also won many prestigious awards and “fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation” (Hacht 68). Some of the awards she has received include the Pulitzer prize for her poetry collection Thomas and Beulah in 1987, NAACP Great American Artist Award in 1993 and the National Medal in the Humanities in 1996. Her father, Ray A. Dove,
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This is a narrative poem with no set meters or patterns. This poem has an interesting plot, with some open-ended components that are left to confuse the reader. Included in this is “the three seal men with eyes as round/ As dinner plates” (Dove 1). The three seal men have been analyzed by many, but it is still unclear what exactly Dove is referring to. One critic believed that the three seal men were cockroaches, while others relate it to comic book characters, such as one of the villains in Wonder Woman: Adventures in Bitterland. However, there are much more interpretations but all critics agree that these characters are “clearly figments of imagination” (Mullen 235). On the other hand, there are very clear symbols and themes in this poem. One of which is the theme of self-discovery. This is introduced early on when Dove describes a girl “wrapped in solitude, the better to explore her budding sexuality” (Mullen 235). The speaker is alone, just with her thoughts, as she discovers the changes present in herself during puberty. This adduces the theme of self-discovery because she is clearing alone and examining herself and the changes that come with puberty. This is also clearly a nervous and stressful time because “sweat prickles behind [her] knees” (Dove 1). I think this
This is a narrative poem with no set meters or patterns. This poem has an interesting plot, with some open-ended components that are left to confuse the reader. Included in this is “the three seal men with eyes as round/ As dinner plates” (Dove 1). The three seal men have been analyzed by many, but it is still unclear what exactly Dove is referring to. One critic believed that the three seal men were cockroaches, while others relate it to comic book characters, such as one of the villains in Wonder Woman: Adventures in Bitterland. However, there are much more interpretations but all critics agree that these characters are “clearly figments of imagination” (Mullen 235). On the other hand, there are very clear symbols and themes in this poem. One of which is the theme of self-discovery. This is introduced early on when Dove describes a girl “wrapped in solitude, the better to explore her budding sexuality” (Mullen 235). The speaker is alone, just with her thoughts, as she discovers the changes present in herself during puberty. This adduces the theme of self-discovery because she is clearing alone and examining herself and the changes that come with puberty. This is also clearly a nervous and stressful time because “sweat prickles behind [her] knees” (Dove 1). I think this