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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.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Talk
Curriculum
Come
Teachers
Need
Early
Children
Poetry
Needs
Instead
Trying
Teacher
Make
Literature
Sure
Pontificate

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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.
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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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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
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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.
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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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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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Libraries are where it all begins.
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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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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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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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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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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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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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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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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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