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" What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world! "
Rita Dove
Twilight
World
Page
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" 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
God
Thought
Loved
" I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels. "
Rita Dove
Up
Black And White
People
" I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more. "
Rita Dove
High School
Think
Science
" 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
Poetry
Time
Lens
" 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
Library
Feeling
Choose
" My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends. "
Rita Dove
Mother
Parents
You
" Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. "
Rita Dove
Powerful
Poetry
Language
" 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
Always
Away
Loved
" I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem. "
Rita Dove
Think
You
Write
" Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. "
Rita Dove
Arts
Without
Success
" 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
You
Teachers
Poetry
" I make a discovery in a poem as I write it. "
Rita Dove
Write
Discovery
I Write
" I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. "
Rita Dove
Only
Step
Carry
" I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned. "
Rita Dove
Way
Always
Been
" 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
Poetry
Plan
Library
" It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded. "
Rita Dove
Need
Sometimes
Things
" 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
Nothing
Worthy
Measure
" Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor. "
Rita Dove
Should
Name
Divided
" I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. "
Rita Dove
Midnight
Best
Night
" There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints. "
Rita Dove
You
Life
Complaining
" I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on. "
Rita Dove
Details
Our
Most
" 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
Think
Sometimes
People
" I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. "
Rita Dove
Children
Insight
Out
" 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
My Life
Amazing
Me
" 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
Forget
Us
Think
" The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with. "
Rita Dove
Joy
Up
Working
" 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. "
Rita Dove
Love
Poem
Process
" I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! "
Rita Dove
Poet
Most
Dream
" As an African-American, as a woman, I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down, never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important. "
Rita Dove
Woman
History
School
" The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now. "
Rita Dove
People
American Dream
American