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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.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Thinking
Begin
Like
Beginning
Audience
Anyone
Analyzing
Writing
Poem
Trying
Center
Way
Driving
Think
Except

More quotes by Rita Dove

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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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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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Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
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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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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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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.
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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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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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Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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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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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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.
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove
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I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.
Rita Dove
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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove
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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
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I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove