Dolls

At the beginning of the poem Rita Dove compares the airport seating to dolls: “the gray vinyl seats linked like / unfolding paper doll” (3-4). This is the only explicit reference to dolls in the poem. But the allusion lingers as the author describes different figures in the airport, encountered in a deceptively superficial way. The reference to the executive “bearing no more than a scrap of himself” (20-21) as other vacationers momentarily glimpsed in the airport also invites comparison with the doll as a token of individual presence.

Wails

Midway through the verse there is a reference to a “baby’s wail” (12). This is one of the primary audio elements animating the description of the scene in the poem. It is something the bachelorette tries to tune out. The wail suggests a familiar ambient hectic atmosphere and the piercing of languor or tranquility.

Itinerary

An itinerary...