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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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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Make
Poem
Always
Discovery
Never
Quite
Sure
Write
Writing
Going
Resolve
Way
Surprised

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I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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 we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
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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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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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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 write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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.
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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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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
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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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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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.
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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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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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.
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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove
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What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
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I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
Rita Dove