On Rita Dove's "Teach Us to Number Our Days"

The poem "Teach Us to Number Our Days" by Rita Dove takes place in an old neighborhood. From the implied prevalence of funeral parlors and cops, one may assume that this is a rough neighborhood, one that is used to violent crime. The bullets in the cops' guns are each refferred to as "a slim blue bullet". The blue is highly symbolic as a visual symbol of the police. The bullets are a symbol of power, and become a symbol of oppression as the poem developes.

In the second stanza, the reader is introduced to a boy. He lives in a low-rent apartment, and plays alone. At night, he dreams of swallowing a blue bean. Though this is evocative of such tales as Jack and the Beanstalk, I would like to suggest another meaning that came up in my AP Literature class, that the boy has nightmares of being shot. The fact that he dreams of swallowing a "blue bean" suggests that he has nightmares of being shot by one of the policemen on the street. The next few lines talk about how the bean grows within him. "It takes root in his gut, sprouts/ and twines upward, the vines curling/ around the sockets and locking them shut." Following the assertion that this is a bullet, the root would be the wound itself, in the gut. The sprout and twining vines could very well be figurative descriptors for the feel of death spreading outward from the gunshot. The final line would refer to death closing the boy's eyes.

There is next mentioned a dark sky. This is foreboding, but also representative of the uncertain future of the boy in this neighborhood. The cops do not care about such issues. They have all the power in the form of the bullets in their guns. In the closing line the chrysanthemums become a symbol for a city. A city where no one cares that these injustices exist.

Rita Dove often wrote using both her identity as an African American, and her identity as a women. In this poem the reader picks up on elements of the former. This poem is a vocalization of the fears and injustices still met by society's young African American men and women of the street, and the perceived, and sometimes very real, injustices that have occurred involving law enforcment officials. The title, "Teach Us to Number Our Days" comes from Psalm 90:12 which is a prayer of Moses. Moses was a liberator of the Jewish people, and until society is free from such repression as is depicted here, society will not be free.

Though this poem was published in 1980, it has very real meaning today. We live in a world of violence. There are violent crimes, there is police brutality, and there are other events as well. This poem reminds us that we cannot stand idly by. We cannot allow ourselves to become either the cops, complacent with what power we have and passively repressing others, or the chrysanthemums, the people of the city, who display a prickly outside to protect themselves, thereby allowing injustice amongst them by not actively putting a stop to it. If we do, we risk the dreams, and the futures of our young people. Then, our days are numbered.

Works Cited

Colburn, Nadia Herman. "'Teach Us to Number Our Days'." In Kimmelman, Burt, and

Temple Cone, eds. The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 2. New

York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb.

2016.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. "Dove, Rita." Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York:

Facts On File, Inc., 2006. (Updated 2011.) Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc.

Web. 10 Feb. 2016.

Vendler, Helen. "Rita Dove: Identity Markers." Callaloo 17, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 381–98.

Quoted as "Rita Dove: Identity Markers" in Bloom, Harold ed. American Women

Poets, New Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House

Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.

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