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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Distillation
Distilled
Poetry
Powerful
Language

More quotes by Rita Dove

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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.
Rita Dove
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I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
Rita Dove
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My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.
Rita Dove
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
Rita Dove
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What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!
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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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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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.
Rita Dove
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One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.
Rita Dove
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To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.
Rita Dove
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The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
Rita Dove
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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
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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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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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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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.
Rita Dove
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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.
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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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.
Rita Dove
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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