Zitat des Tages von Rita Dove:
I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.
One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.
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.
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.
I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.
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.
It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.
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.
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!
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.
I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.
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.
What writing does is to reveal.
Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.
Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.
My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.
I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.
I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.
I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.
I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.
I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
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.
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.
I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.
You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.
I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually.
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.
