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"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."
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"You need a poetic touch from the outer space? Then you need the moonlight!"
"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."
"Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others."
"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."
"A poem can't do its work if you only read snippets of it."
"The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly."
"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."
"A poet is not an inventor. A poet is a player that plays with words on the field of human imagination to excite a reader's mind with the colors of emotion."
Explore more quotes by Rita Dove
"It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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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