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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Rita Dove Read Quote
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. Rita Dove Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely. Rita Dove Read Quote
I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn’t a person. Rita Dove Read Quote
I didn’t know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. Rita Dove Read Quote
I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things. Rita Dove Read Quote
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 Read Quote
