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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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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Grows
Space
Lives
Cannot
Even
Fit
Grow

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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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.
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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.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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
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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.
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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.
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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