Chocolate Rita Dove

Poetry is a genre of literature or art created by humans which consists largely of literary works, distinctive style, and rhythm. Rita Dove is African American women who used poetry as a way to express herself. Born in Ohio, she excelled in school and was honored as a Presidential Scholar and was in the top 100 high school students in the nation. Later in life, she won the poetry Pulitzer Prize for the semi-autobiographical book, Thomas and Beulah, over the lives of Dove’s grandparents. Dove was the first African American women to ever be named the Poet Laureate of the US. In the poem, Chocolate, by Rita Dove uses some major literary devices to show her affections towards a man that she loved. Although Chocolate doesn’t have any sort of rhyme scheme it still has structure and flows very well. The three lines per stanza allows the poem to flow and altogether the poem contains 16 lines. The last line is by itself in order to really highlight the full impact of it. The speaker is the poet, Rita Dove, and she is directing her message towards an audience of newer adults who might possibly be going through the same situation that she was.

First, during the beginning of the poem, the imagery was at it’s strongest when Dove describes chocolate as, “Velvet fruit, exquisite square” (Dove). Her word choice and descriptors really make up the imagine of a little smooth square of chocolate and bring something extra to the poem. Likewise, another strong suit of the poem would be the personification just like when she said the chocolate was a “pleasure seeker” (Dove). Obviously actual chocolate cannot be a pleasure seeker since it’s an inanimate object but to make it more intense the poet gave it life. Finally, tying in with the personification used, the chocolate is a symbol of a man whom Dove loved and felt the need to express that love through her