164 Quotes by 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.

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

I’m never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I’m always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

I think that you certainly don’t have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

I’ve always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

We wire the sky for comfort; we thread it through our lungs for a perfect fit. We’ve arranged this calm, though it is constantly unraveling. Where does it go then, atmosphere suckered up an invisible flue? How can we know where it goes?

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.

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.

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.