Quotes by Rita Dove

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”

“If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.”

“I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on”

“Heres a riddle for Our Age: when the skys the limit, how can you tell youve gone too far?”

“Sometimes/ a word is found so right it trembles/ at the slightest explanation.”

“Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In colder to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.”

“Whats invisible/ sings, and we bear witness.”

“Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until theres space to grow?”

“She took a group of us to see a living author, just a book signing. But thats really all it took to get me started on realizing my dream.”

“If were going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. Its the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.”

“Poetry: the best words in the best order”

NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,begging vacantly with pale eyes;and the commas leapt at me like wormsor miniature scythes blackened with age.the praying mantis screeched louder,his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.I walked outside;the grass hissed at my heels.Up ahead in the lapping darknesshe wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,a brontosaurus, a poet.

Ive never stopped wanting to cross the equator, or touch an

dont think you can ever forget her dont even try shes not going to budgeno choice but to grant her spacecrown her with skyfor she is one of the manyand she is each of us

Since shes discoveredmen would rather drownthan nibble,she does just fine.

Women invented misery, but we dont understand it.

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace.The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscapeby a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer;my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning —and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me.At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and Iwould rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at.So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light.Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variationswhich I’ve named Prometheus,after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back.I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? —I also cannot stop listening.

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

The First BookOpen it.Go ahead, it wont bite.Well. . . maybe a little.More a nip, like. A tingle.Its pleasurable, really.You see, it keeps on opening.You may fall in.Sure, its hard to get started;remember learning to useknife and fork? Dig in:youll never reach bottom.Its not like its the end of the world--just the world as you thinkyou know it.

Our situation is intolerable, but whats worseis to sit here and do nothing.