Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Rita Dove

Image
I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
Rita Dove
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
Rita Dove
Image
Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
Rita Dove
Image
I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
Rita Dove
Image
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.
Rita Dove
Image
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.
Rita Dove
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Rita Dove
Image
If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
Rita Dove
Image
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!
Rita Dove
Image
The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
Rita Dove
Image
For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove
Image
Libraries are where it all begins.
Rita Dove
Image
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!
Rita Dove
Image
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