Rita Dove
Rita Dove
Rita Frances Doveis an American poet and author. From 1993 to 1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African-American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position. Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 August 1952
CityAkron, OH
Here's a riddle for Our Age: when the sky's the limit, how can you tell you've gone too far?
For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.
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.
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.
My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.
I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else.
I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.
I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.
I've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it.
I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.
What writing does is to reveal.
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.