Rita Dove Quotes & Sayings

I've never
stopped wanting to cross
the equator, or touch an elk's
horns, or sing Tosca or screw
James Dean in a field of wheat.
To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong:
I'll never be through with my life. — Rita Dove

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry. — Rita Dove

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate. — Rita Dove

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded. — Rita Dove

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels. — Rita Dove

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. — Rita Dove

If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level. — Rita Dove

I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us. — Rita Dove

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings. — Rita Dove

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture. — Rita Dove

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure. — Rita Dove

I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. — Rita Dove

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard. — Rita Dove

To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about. — 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'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

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

There is not going to be any change unless we can begin to talk about any little fear, any little hatred, any little bias that we might have and to admit that all human beings have them. — Rita Dove

I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else. — Rita Dove

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. — Rita Dove

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely. — Rita Dove

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. — Rita Dove

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day. — Rita Dove

If you can't be free, be a mystery. — Rita Dove

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet. — Rita Dove

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints. — Rita Dove

If you cannot be free, be a mystery. — Rita Dove

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

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry. — Rita Dove

My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets. — Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder-
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one had heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.
(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground. — Rita Dove

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned. — Rita Dove

In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing. — Rita Dove

Women invented misery,
but we don't understand it. — Rita Dove

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more. — Rita Dove

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer. — Rita Dove

The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with. — Rita Dove

Libraries are where it all begins. — Rita Dove

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. — Rita Dove

Since she's discovered
men would rather drown
than nibble,
she does just
fine. — Rita Dove

When I was young, I was older than I am today. — Rita Dove

What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world? — Rita Dove

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing. — Rita Dove

Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers. — Rita Dove

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit. — Rita Dove

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree. — Rita Dove

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well ... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world
just the world as you think you know it. — Rita Dove

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. — 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

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

Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor. — Rita Dove

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. — Rita Dove

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on. — 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

Sometimes
a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation. — Rita Dove

Poetry of all the forms of literature I think is the most suited for the digital age and for the shorter attention spans and all of that. It Twitters very easily, some lyric poems and it's very easy to zip a poem to someone, so that's one of the things I think is wonderful about poetry in the digital age. — Rita Dove

My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom. — Rita Dove

Against Self-Pity
It gets you nowhere but deeper into
your own shit
pure misery a luxury
one never learns to enjoy. — Rita Dove

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem. — Rita Dove

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing. — 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

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither. — Rita Dove

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. — Rita Dove

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can't imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America's alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart - and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings. — 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 think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive. — Rita Dove

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. — Rita Dove

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate. — Rita Dove

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things. — Rita Dove

I was not interested in doing the plot of OEDIPUS in blackface. I did wonder, what would these people have been like if they hadn't been in that situation? ... One could look at Oedipus, or at my character Augustus, as a cynical schemer who did everything because he was hungry for power. But that's just too easy. I'm more interested in how humans can embody conflicting goals and emotions. — Rita Dove

I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. — Rita Dove

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. — 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

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it. — Rita Dove

If fucking were graceful,desire an alibi. — Rita Dove

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things. — Rita Dove

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. — 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

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature. — Rita Dove

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding. — Rita Dove

What writing does is to reveal. — 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

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet. — Rita Dove

My first advice would be to read, read, read, which sounds interesting coming in a digital age, but it's so much easier to listen to a poem than it is to sit down and actually read it and to hear it in your head and that is something that every poet or aspiring poet needs to be able to do, I think to hear it in their head. — Rita Dove

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is. — Rita Dove

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names? — Rita Dove

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

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. — Rita Dove

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand. — Rita Dove

Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow? — 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

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

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry. — Rita Dove

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. — Rita Dove

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something. — Rita Dove

Don't think you can ever forget her
don't even try
she's not going to budge
no choice but to grant her space
crown her with sky
for she is one of the many
and she is each of us — Rita Dove

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it. — Rita Dove

I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished. — Rita Dove

Nexus
I wrote stubbornly into the evening.
At the window, a giant praying mantis
rubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,
begging vacantly with pale eyes;
and the commas leapt at me like worms
or miniature scythes blackened with age.
the praying mantis screeched louder,
his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.
I walked outside;
the grass hissed at my heels.
Up ahead in the lapping darkness
he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,
a brontosaurus, a poet. — Rita Dove

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside. — Rita Dove