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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
Think
Except
Thinking
Begin
Like
Beginning
Audience
Anyone
Analyzing
Writing
Poem
Trying
Center
Way
Driving

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When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
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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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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
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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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We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
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What writing does is to reveal.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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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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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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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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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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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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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
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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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Libraries are where it all begins.
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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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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.
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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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