Quotes By 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.

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.

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!

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.

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

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.

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

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

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

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

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

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.

What writing does is to reveal.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.