Exploring the Text

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  1. What does Rita Dove mean when she says, “the time right inside a place / so wrong it was ready” (ll. 2–3)? What time and place is she referring to? Why do you think she isn’t more specific?

    Question

    ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=
    Exploring the Text: - What does Rita Dove mean when she says, “the time right inside a place / so wrong it was ready” (ll. 2–3)? What time and place is she referring to? Why do you think she isn’t more specific?
  2. How does Dove characterize Rosa Parks? What does she expect the reader to bring to the poem?

    Question

    ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=
    Exploring the Text: - How does Dove characterize Rosa Parks? What does she expect the reader to bring to the poem?
  3. What is the speaker’s attitude toward Rosa Parks?

    Question

    ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=
    Exploring the Text: - What is the speaker’s attitude toward Rosa Parks?
  4. In the last stanza, “they” refers to the two policemen who came on the bus to arrest Rosa Parks. They picked up her purse and bag and handed them to her when they put her in the backseat of the police car to drive her to jail. How do you think Dove meant the last two words, “That courtesy,” to be understood?

    Question

    ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=
    Exploring the Text: - In the last stanza, “they” refers to the two policemen who came on the bus to arrest Rosa Parks. They picked up her purse and bag and handed them to her when they put her in the backseat of the police car to drive her to jail. How do you think Dove meant the last two words, “That courtesy,” to be understood?
  5. Dove said about “Rosa” that the poem speculates “not only on Rosa Parks’s historic non-doing…but also on any moment in history when one is suddenly confronted with a choice—what would one do.” What other moments does this poem bring to mind? Have you had an experience making this kind of choice? Explain.

    Question

    ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=
    Exploring the Text: - Dove said about “Rosa” that the poem speculates “not only on Rosa Parks’s historic non-doing…but also on any moment in history when one is suddenly confronted with a choice—what would one do.” What other moments does this poem bring to mind? Have you had an experience making this kind of choice? Explain.