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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.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Poetry
Race
Apprehensive
Age
Filtered
Every
Lens
Would
Feared
Time
Lenses
Talked
Sex

More quotes by 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.
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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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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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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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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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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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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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.
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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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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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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What writing does is to reveal.
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!
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Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
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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.
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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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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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