Daystar Rita Dove Analysis

Most every mother has been there; feeling overwhelmed, constantly trying to pilfer a few precious and private moments from the never-ending days and too-short nights of the hectic, domestic servitude that is motherhood, and rarely ever does one succeed. However, in “Daystar,” a confessional poem that relies heavily on the poetic devices of connotation and imagery to describe the loneliness and weariness of a young mother who feels trapped in her domesticity, poet Rita Dove does just that, however briefly – she finds “a little room for thinking” amid the chaos and clutter of an otherwise dreary life.
The first line of the poem, “She wanted a little room for thinking,” states this common wish succinctly, and the following two lines, “but she saw diapers steaming on the line/A doll slumped behind the door,” utilize connotation to insinuate much more than a messy house or the presence of very young children. The steaming diapers represent the mother’s intensive labor and the slumping doll, her weary mood – perhaps becoming symbolic for the sleeping children or the mother herself. The
“Sometimes there were things to watch” (line 6), Dove opines, such as “the pinched armor of a vanished cricket” (line 7), or “a floating maple leaf” (line 8), while other times the worn-out woman found pleasure in staring at nothing at all: “Other days/she stared until she was assured/when she closed her eyes/she'd only see her own vivid blood,” (lines 8-11). Nevertheless, some slight connotation can be found in these lines as well. The things she sees – crickets and maple leaves and the insides of her own eyelids – are in no way as important as the things she does not see – steaming diapers, needy children, and a cluttered house. She has succeeded in carving out “a little room for thinking” behind her