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What writing does is to reveal.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Reveal
Doe
Writing

More quotes by 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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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
Rita Dove
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Libraries are where it all begins.
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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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.
Rita Dove
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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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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I've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it.
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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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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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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 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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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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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
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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.
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