Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Never
Quite
Sure
Write
Writing
Going
Resolve
Way
Surprised
Make
Poem
Always
Discovery
More quotes by Rita Dove
I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!
Rita Dove
I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
Rita Dove
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
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
A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
Rita Dove
What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
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
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
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
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
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.
Rita Dove
You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.
Rita Dove
Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
Rita Dove
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
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
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!
Rita Dove
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
I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
Rita Dove
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
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove