Best 99 quotes of Rita Dove on MyQuotes

Rita Dove

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    Rita Dove

    All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

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    Rita Dove

    Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.

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    Rita Dove

    As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

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    Rita Dove

    At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself.

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    Rita Dove

    Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

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    Rita Dove

    Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

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    Rita Dove

    Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

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    Rita Dove

    Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.

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    Rita Dove

    Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

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    Rita Dove

    Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.

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    Rita Dove

    For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about the lack of respect artists got here. In my heart, I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

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    Rita Dove

    From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

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    Rita Dove

    Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.

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    Rita Dove

    Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

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    Rita Dove

    I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

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    Rita Dove

    I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

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    Rita Dove

    I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

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    Rita Dove

    I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp; I shed skins.

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    Rita Dove

    I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

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    Rita Dove

    If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

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    Rita Dove

    If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.

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    Rita Dove

    If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

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    Rita Dove

    If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.

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    Rita Dove

    If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer

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    Rita Dove

    If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.

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    Rita Dove

    If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

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    Rita Dove

    I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

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    Rita Dove

    I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years - or longer.

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    Rita Dove

    I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

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    Rita Dove

    I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

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    Rita Dove

    I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

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    Rita Dove

    I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

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    Rita Dove

    I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.

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    Rita Dove

    In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.

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    Rita Dove

    Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

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    Rita Dove

    In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

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    Rita Dove

    I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

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    Rita Dove

    I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

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    Rita Dove

    I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

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    Rita Dove

    I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

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    Rita Dove

    I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

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    Rita Dove

    I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

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    Rita Dove

    I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

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    Rita Dove

    I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing.

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    Rita Dove

    It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.

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    Rita Dove

    It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

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    Rita Dove

    I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

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    Rita Dove

    It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

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    Rita Dove

    It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

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    Rita Dove

    I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.