Quote

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
Sound
Mandolin
Comes
String
Time
Cheerful
Think
Melancholy
Thinking
Double

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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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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.
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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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Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?
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I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
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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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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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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've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it.
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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.
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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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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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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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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
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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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What writing does is to reveal.
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