There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Rita DoveRead
I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The process of creating poetry is often a journey of personal discovery for the poet.
Rita Dove's quote highlights the inherent relationship between writing poetry and self-discovery. As a poet engages with their craft, they often uncover new insights, emotions, and understandings about themselves and the world around them, suggesting that the act of writing is not only about creation but also about exploration and revelation.
Themes
PoetryDiscoveryCreative ProcessSelf-ExplorationArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry workshop, I shared Dove's quote to inspire participants to embrace the unknown journey of creation.
More from Rita Dove
All quotes →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 DoveRead
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 DoveRead
If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
Rita DoveRead
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.
Rita DoveRead
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.
Rita DoveRead
Similar quotes
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.
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The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.
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Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
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I'm here to make good pictures. If I don't see it, I won't touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!
William WylerRead
A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.
Paul CelanRead
I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
Ursula K. Le GuinRead