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

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Never
Ideological
Divided
Equality
Determination
Name
Names
Religious
Self
Fervor

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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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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.
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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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When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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 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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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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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
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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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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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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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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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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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People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
Rita Dove