Rita Dove Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

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
If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.

Rita Dove
Sometimes
a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation.

Rita Dove
Who discovered usefulness?
Who forgot how to sing, simply?

Rita Dove
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.

Rita Dove
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.

Rita Dove
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.

Rita Dove
Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree —
or ride one, hair blown to froth.
That's why horses were invented...

Rita Dove
The camels stand in all their vague beauty —
at night they fold up like pale accordions.

Rita Dove
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

Rita Dove
Candy buttons went with Brenda Starr,
Bazooka bubble gum with the Justice
League of America. Fig Newtons
and "King Lear," bitter lemon as well
for Othello, that desolate
conspicuous soul.

Rita Dove
I didn't notice
how still you'd become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?)—achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.

Rita Dove
The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.

Rita Dove
There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp the cane appears
to haunt us, and we cut it down.

Rita Dove
Twelve years to the day
he puts the blue worry bead into his mouth.
The trick is to swallow your good luck, too.
Last words to a daughter...
and a wink to remember him by.

Rita Dove
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs
men of his village wore in their capes
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed
for a single, beautiful word.

Rita Dove
How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

Rita Dove
In water-heavy nights behind grandmother's porch
We knelt in the tickling grasses and whispered: Linda's face hung before us, pale as a pecan, And it grew wise as she said: "A boy's lips are soft, As soft as baby's skin."

Rita Dove
The hat on the table
in the dining room
is no pet trained
to sit still. Three
pearl-tipped spears and Beulah
maneuvering her shadow
to the floor. The hat
is cold. The hat
wants more.

Rita Dove
For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

Rita Dove
Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.

Rita Dove
The general sees the fields of sugarcane, lashed by
rain and streaming.
He sees his mother's smile, the teeth
gnawed to arrowheads. He hears
the Haitians sing without R's
as they swing the great machetes:
"Katalina," they sing, "Katalina,
mi madle, mi amol en muelte." God knows
his mother was no stupid woman; she
could roll her R's like a queen.

Rita Dove
You are mine, I say to the twice-dunked cruller
before I eat it.

Rita Dove
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
You start out with one thing, end
up with another, and nothing's
like it used to be, not even the future.

Rita Dove
On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her
her first swimming pool. It had been his favorite color, exactly — just
so much of it, the swimmers' white arms jutting
into the chevrons of high society.
She had rolled up her window
And told him to drive on, fast.

Rita Dove
Every day a wilderness—no shade in sight. Beulah patient among knickknacks, the solarium a rage of light, a grainstorm as her gray cloth brings dark wood to life.

Rita Dove
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.

Rita Dove
The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

Rita Dove
As my mama always said:
half a happiness is better
than none at goddam all.

Rita Dove