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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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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Great
Simply
Context
Writing
Saying
Poems
Every
Written
Fascinated
Something
Happened
Hopefully
Always
History
Historical
Plucking
Write
Case
Haunted
Felt
Couldn
Shake
Become
Cases
Shakes

More quotes by 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.
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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.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
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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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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.
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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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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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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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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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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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
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I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
Rita Dove
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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.
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What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
Rita Dove
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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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Libraries are where it all begins.
Rita Dove
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
Rita Dove