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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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"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."
"I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me."
"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."
"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."
"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."
"Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose."
"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."
Explore more quotes by 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry."
"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."
"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!"
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