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Rita Dove
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“... they come / from the east, trunk to tail, / clumsy ballerinas.”
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“The camels stand in all their vague beauty — / at night they fold up like pale accordions.”
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“You start out with one thing, end / up with another, and nothing's / like it used to be, not even the future.”
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“Who discovered usefulness? / Who forgot how to sing, simply?”
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“I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp; I shed skins.”
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“What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world?”
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“When the right man smiled it would be / music skittering up her calf / like a chuckle.”
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“Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree — / or ride one, hair blown to froth. / That's why horses were invented ...”
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“Here's a riddle for Our Age: when the sky's the limit, / how can you tell you've gone too far?”
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“... anecdotes, / The poor man's history.”
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“Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.”
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“To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.”
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“Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.”
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“Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.”
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“Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.”
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“Don't be so fast, / you're all you've got.”
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“The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.”
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“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
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“The house, shut up like a pocket watch, / those tight hearts breathing inside — / she could never invent them.”
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“If you can't be free, be a mystery.”
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“A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It’s concentrated, you carry it around with you, and it nourishes you when you need it.”
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“Poetry is the purest of the language arts. It’s the tightest cage, and if you can get to sing in that cage it’s really really wonderful.”
Rita Dove, U.S. poet, writer
(1952)
Full name: Rita Frances Dove.