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By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Planet
Making
Planets
Moments
Beings
Human
Poetry
Humans
Gives
Giving
Stop
Mean
Moment
Think
Thinking
Opportunity

More quotes by Rita Dove

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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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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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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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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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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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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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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.
Rita Dove
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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.
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.
Rita Dove
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I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.
Rita Dove
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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
Rita Dove
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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
Rita Dove
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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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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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When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
Rita Dove