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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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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Moving
Poet
Treat
Antithetical
Process
Outside
Treats
Bombarded
Seems
Poetry
Quickly
Receptive
America
Level
Daily
Parallel
Everything
Move
Surface
Parallels
Kind
Levels
Perception
Openness
Things
Information
Tend
Tendency
Life
Universe
Exist
Tendencies

More quotes by 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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Libraries are where it all begins.
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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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about the lack of respect artists got here. In my heart, I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.
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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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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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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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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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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Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.
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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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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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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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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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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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