Color speaks volumes in Rita Dove’s poetry. As the first black poet laureate and potent mother figure, this piece honors her inspired, slightly subversive voice in the context of a powerful, direct gaze.
Part of what draws me to Dove’s work is the lyrical use of color as a literary device. Red symbolizes aggressive subject matter, while pink represents mothers and daughters. In one of my favorite poems devoted to her young daughter, Dove closes with the line, “we’re in the pink and the pink’s in us.” In another, the mother of Persephone grapples with indescribable grief over the prospect of losing her child.
As a mother whose journey was largely defined by viewing my pink, premature baby through a NICU incubator, her color-saturated stanzas go straight to my heart.
