Dusting": Stanza-by-Stanza
First Stanza
The opening line carries with it both contrast and common ground with the mundane
title, which brings images of chores and work with a duster and cloth, the job of a
lowly cleaner, or the process of cleaning shelves and furniture.
Unusual use of stark language—that word wilderness conjures up all kinds of
scenes, ideas about loss, bleak beauty, a place lacking intimacy and social
interaction, a wild landscape.
Yet here is a human, Beulah, steadily dusting the knickknacks in a solarium (a room
built for maximum sunlight to reach through window and glass). The word 'Beulah'
comes from the Bible's old testament, the book of Isaiah.
She is patient, carefully cleaning the wood despite the rage of the sunlight. This
contrasting language creates a kind of introductory tension. And what
about grainstorm suggesting dust clouds and seeds, brainstorm and goodness?
Here is a woman facing a wilderness with only a gray cloth, using her daily routine to
make the wood and knickknacks shine.
Second Stanza
The dusting progresses, the language contrasting, suggestive—take note of gleam
darker still—reflecting her memory which has both light and shade. She's looking for
a name, the boy at the fair with the rifle booth (where the idea is to pay and shoot at
a small target not too distant, the reward being a prize of some kind).
Beulah was kissed by this boy. An important event in the life of a growing girl. The
fish she either won or was given is described as a rippling wound, implying that there
was hurt involved somehow.
Third Stanza
The sense moves between Beulah's inner thoughts and memories and the dusting.
Memories release, the manual cleaning restricts? Or is the opposite true?
Figurative language comes to the fore here. The metaphor of stroke and breath,
almost existential. What is the canary in bloom? Canary bird, songster, bird of the
sunlight, once taken down the mine as a sacrificial symbol, sensitive to dangerous
gas.
Another recall—getting home in freezing weather, melting the ice that had frozen
around the fish? It swims free.
Fourth Stanza
The reader learns of abandonment by the father, a traumatic episode surely,
preceding the fairground kiss and the fish. The focus is now on her name, Beulah.
There are two meanings—one can be broken or kept secret, and the other stretches
out and is dry and arid, like the wilderness in the first stanza.
Right at the end, the name of the boy comes through. We can only assume Beulah
gains satisfaction from this but nonetheless carries on dusting.
"Dusting" and the Name Beulah
Beulah comes from the Hebrew language and is mentioned in the book of
Isaiah, Old Testament. It means to be married or possessed.
William Blake, the mystical English poet, used it to signify a mythological land
where men and women lived in a dreamy paradise.
John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress chose it as a fictional place, the Land of
Beulah.
"Beulah Land" is also the title of gospel hymn 1875/76
Rita Dove and a Summary of "Dusting"
"Dusting" is a short, free verse poem taken from Rita Dove's Pulitzer Prize-winning
book Thomas and Beulah, a sequence of poems published in 1987. The characters
are loosely based on Dove's maternal grandparents.
