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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Word
Found
Right
Sometimes
Trembles
Slightest
Explanation

More quotes by Rita Dove

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As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.
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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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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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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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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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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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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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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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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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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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
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.
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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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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I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp I shed skins.
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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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
Rita Dove
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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