Flirtation — Rita Dove
Flirtation — Rita Dove
Rita Dove’s Flirtation captures the charged, uncertain moment before a relationship even begins. The poem needs no named characters and no dramatic plot — it lingers on small physical details, sensory impressions, and the hush of night, letting attraction build without a single word passing between the two people involved.
Rita Dove: Poet and Context
Rita Dove writes with a strong interest in the legacy of the African diaspora, and has lived and worked in Germany and Ireland as well as the United States. She is also an avid ballroom dancer — worth remembering, since Flirtation is itself a poem about two bodies moving carefully around one another. Since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997, she has also written about living with the condition, though this poem stays firmly in the earlier, lighter world of new attraction.
Rita Dove was born in Ohio, has served as US Poet Laureate, and won the Pulitzer Prize. She helped organise a millennial celebration at the Lincoln Memorial alongside composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg, showing her standing across the arts.
What Happens in the Poem
The poem is not addressed to a named lover, and could describe the start of any relationship, serious or fleeting. Two people share a quiet, sensuous moment in which Dove insists there is ‘no need to say anything’. Instead of speech, meaning passes through gesture, glance, and the senses — touch, scent, and sight carry the feeling that words might spoil.
A central image lifts something ordinary and freshly prepared into something precious: it is compared to ‘a tulip on a wedgewood plate’. This is a comparison built on top of another comparison — an everyday object elevated, through two linked images, into something delicate and ornamental. It captures how flirtation transforms the ordinary into something charged with meaning.
Dove also compares the shape and control of flirtation itself to ‘topiary’, the art of clipping a hedge into a deliberate, decorative form. Flirtation, like topiary, is not wild or accidental — it is shaped carefully, even when it looks natural. The poem frames the whole encounter as ‘walking through’ something: not an explosive event, but a slow, unhurried passage from one state to another.
The poem uses enjambment across an early stanza break, letting one idea flow into the next without a full stop — fitting for a poem about a moment that is itself unresolved and still unfolding. Dove also uses personification, giving the sun and the night their own actions within the scene, so the natural world seems to take part in the flirtation alongside the two people. Throughout, Dove leans on sibilance and alliteration to build a hushed, sensuous soundscape matching the poem’s quiet, night-time setting. The poem ends on a single-line final stanza, isolating its last image and giving the poem a soft, suspended close rather than a firm conclusion.
Themes: Beginnings and Indirect Attraction
Flirtation sits at the very start of a relationship — before commitment, before declarations, before anything is confirmed. Dove treats this early stage as valuable in its own right, not simply as a stepping stone to something more serious. The poem’s refusal to use direct speech mirrors this idea: attraction is expressed through image and sensation, not statement.
Because ‘Flirtation’ is not printed in full on the paper if chosen for the second part of the question, the short phrases students recall matter most: ‘no need to say anything’, ‘a tulip on a wedgewood plate’, ‘walking through’, and ‘topiary’. Each captures a different technique — unspoken communication, double comparison, gradual movement, and shaped control.
Comparing Flirtation with Other Poems
Robert Browning’s Now also focuses on making the absolute most of a single moment of intimacy — comparing methods here would draw out how both poets slow time down and treat one instant as the whole world of the poem.
James Fenton’s In Paris With You shares Flirtation’s interest in sensuality and physical presence, though Fenton’s speaker talks constantly while Dove’s stay silent — a useful contrast in how each poet handles direct speech versus sensory suggestion.
John Keats’s Bright Star offers another sensuous depiction of night-time closeness, so comparing imagery of night and stillness between the two poems would highlight how each poet uses darkness to intensify tenderness.
Liz Lochhead’s I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine gives a useful contrast rather than a parallel: where Dove’s speaker communicates through quiet gesture, Lochhead’s speaker rejects convention loudly and directly, giving a clear difference in tone and directness to compare.
Using Flirtation in the Exam
Remember that the poetry question never asks you to compare two anthology poems directly. In the first part, the printed anthology poem is compared with an unseen poem chosen for a shared theme. In the second part, you explore one other anthology poem entirely from memory, without the text in front of you. Flirtation could serve as either: as the printed poem, paired with an unseen poem about new attraction or unspoken feeling, or as your chosen poem for the second part, provided you have its short quotations ready to use.
When practising the comparison skill for an unseen poem, read quickly for three things: the ideas and attitudes each poem explores, the tone and atmosphere each creates, and the effects of the language and structure each poet chooses. Hold both poems in your mind together rather than finishing one before starting the other — a strong comparison keeps moving between the two texts throughout the response.