Best quotes by Rita Dove on Poetry

Checkout quotes by Rita Dove on Poetry

• ‟ Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

  - Rita Dove
  

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

  - 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.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ 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.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ 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.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

  - Rita Dove
  

• ‟ I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.

  - Rita Dove