Hyperbole And Diction In Rita Dove's 'Heart By Heart'

From my heart to yours

Did you know that your heart beats 73 times per minute, 4,320 per hour, 103,680 per day, 37,869,120 per year and approximately 3,500,000,000 per lifetime? It’s a lot, but do you think the heart Is just a shapeless muscle that doesn’t make any sound and only pumps blood in and out to all our body (except the corneas)? In this free verse poem Rita Dove talks about the heart literally, usually when people write about the heart they talk about the feelings they have in it, love, but for Rita it’s just one more muscle. In “Heart by Heart”, Rita Dove uses diction, hyperbole and metaphor to show that the heart is just a shapeless muscle that at the end feels love and if someone wants your heart then they´ll have to accept who you are.

It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or hardden, so it can´t feel pain, yarnin, regret.” In this sentence she uses words such as pain and regret to show that the heart is just a muscle, an organ that can´t get hurt, that can´t feel pain. On the second paragraph she says: “I can´t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here it´s all yours, now- but you´ll have to take me too. Here she uses diction to show that the heart is there, that we can feel it but we can´t show. What we can do is give it to someone only if they completely accept