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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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"One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry."

"A tough life needs a tough language-and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers-a language powerful enough to say how it is."

"I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry and I think it's nicer' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed 'to look at it through poetry."

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

"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."

"The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness."

"Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production."

"My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,But soft... behold!A sunlight beamButting a swath of glimmering gleam.My heart expands,'tis grown a bulge in it,Inspired by your beauty...Effulgent."
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."


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


"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."


"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."


"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."


"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."


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


"Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure."
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