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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
Fit
Grow
Grows
Space
Lives
Cannot
Even

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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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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.
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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
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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.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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 father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.
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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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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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What writing does is to reveal.
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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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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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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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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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!
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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