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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.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Interest
Lack
Understand
Fail
Art
Artists
Heart
Moved
Years
Failing
People
Respect
Heard
Complained
Literature
Failed

More quotes by Rita Dove

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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
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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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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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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
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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 believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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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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I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.
Rita Dove
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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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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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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
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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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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.
Rita Dove
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We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.
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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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I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
Rita Dove