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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
Making
Planet
Moments
Planets
Human
Beings
Humans
Poetry
Giving
Gives
Mean
Stop
Think
Moment
Thinking
Opportunity

More quotes by Rita Dove

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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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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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Libraries are where it all begins.
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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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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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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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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.
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
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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
Rita Dove
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I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
Rita Dove
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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.
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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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.
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?
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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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 think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
Rita Dove
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
Rita Dove
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What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove