Quote

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Possible
Women
Existed
Right
Fronts
Something
Front
Never
Evidence
Imagination
Impossible
Imagine

More quotes by Rita Dove

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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
Rita Dove
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I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?
Rita Dove
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What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
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I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
Rita Dove
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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
Rita Dove
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I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
Rita Dove
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Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.
Rita Dove
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The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now
Rita Dove
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When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
Rita Dove
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We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.
Rita Dove
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By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.
Rita Dove
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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
Rita Dove
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove
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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
Rita Dove
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If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
Rita Dove