With "Geometry," Dove employs a lyric three-line stanza to express delight in writing verse. She derives the title from a brother's recommendation that she visualize shapes while working out geometric proofs. Selecting robust verbs for a series on remodeling, she re-creates the poet's work as knocking out walls, removing windows, and forcing the ceiling up. To characterize the whole process, she retreats from activity with a satisfied sigh. The walls, made clear, free the odor of carnations, a funeral flower that takes its name from the Latin for flesh because the blossom gives off an odor like a decaying corpse. Thus, her energetic removal of restraints is also a reprieve from dismal reminders of mortality.
To meld into a conclusion, Dove breaks the last line of stanza II and hurries on to stanza III with joy in being "out in the open." The invitation to look beyond confinement grows out of magical realism. For example, like cartoon shapes, the uptilted windows, tinged with sunlight, change into butterflies, a complex image of optimism and flight. Unconstrained in the act of composing poetry, Dove moves toward truths that await proving.
