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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
Make
Literature
Sure
Pontificate
Talk
Curriculum
Come
Teachers
Need
Early
Children
Poetry
Needs
Instead
Trying
Teacher

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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
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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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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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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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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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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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The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now
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I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
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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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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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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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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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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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 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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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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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 carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
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