Faith & Spirit Quote by Rita Dove

There is a quiet violence in the way talent gets mythologized, and Rita Dove names it with disarming clarity. As a young reader, she doesn’t describe books as intimidating because they’re difficult; they’re intimidating because authorship has been culturally staged as divinity. “The person who had written the book was a god” isn’t naive worship so much as a diagnosis of distance: the gap between consuming art and imagining yourself permitted to make it.

The line works because it’s personal without staying private. Dove slips from “I loved to read” into “the dream was too far away,” tracing a common ladder that’s missing rungs for many people, especially Black girls coming of age in mid-century America. Canon formation, classroom reverence, and the scarcity of visible models can turn literature into a sealed temple: you can enter as a visitor, not as a builder. Calling the author “a god” captures how institutions teach awe before they teach access.

Subtextually, it’s also an origin story about demystification. Dove’s later career - Pulitzer-winning poet, U.S. Poet Laureate - becomes a counterargument to her younger self. The sentence sets up the turning point every artist needs: realizing that books are made by humans with drafts, doubts, and ordinary lives. In that sense, the quote isn’t just about reading; it’s about permission. It critiques a culture that hoards artistic authority, then hints at the radical act of claiming it anyway.