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The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Strings
Curious
Shadow
Mandolin
Sound
String
Comes
Cheerful
Time
Melancholy
Think
Thinking
Double

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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!
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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.
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
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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.
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I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Libraries are where it all begins.
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.
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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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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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?
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