"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."

Reading, Poetry, Congress, Rest

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"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."

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"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

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"When someone tells me to 'just relax,' I wonder why they don't hand me a book?"

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"I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second."

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"All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job."

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"Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom."

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"What's the use trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those little paper editions whose pages get ruffled, or stuck together with sea-water?"

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"It is impossible to think of any good meal, no matter how plain or elegant, without soup or bread in it."

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"Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

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Explore more quotes by 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."

Age

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

Talent

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

People

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

Thought

"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."

Being

"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."

People

"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."

Writing

"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."

Love

"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."

Emotional

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

Poetry