Art & Creativity Quote by Rita Dove

Rita Dove is poking a finger into one of the most common anxieties in contemporary art: the fear of writing the “right” thing instead of the true thing. The phrase “for PC reasons” isn’t a dismissal of politics or ethics; it’s a warning about motive. “Because you think you ought to” names the performance of virtue that can creep into creative work when the writer is more focused on being seen as correct than on being compelled. Dove’s target is obligation masquerading as inspiration, the kind of dutiful topic-picking that turns a poem into a position statement with line breaks.

The subtext is both artistic and moral. Artistic, because writing driven by external approval tends to produce language that feels pre-approved: safe, generalized, oddly bloodless. Moral, because Dove implies that audiences can sense when a piece is made to satisfy a cultural checkpoint rather than to risk something personal. “Anything that is really going to matter to anyone else” is a quietly ruthless standard: she’s arguing that impact isn’t manufactured through “important” subjects; it’s earned through stakes. The last sentence tightens the screw. “It has to matter to you” makes sincerity less a feeling than a discipline: the willingness to be implicated, not just informed.

Context matters: Dove, as a Black woman poet who has navigated expectations about what she should write, is asserting artistic agency against a marketplace that often confuses representation with prescription. She’s not rejecting social subjects; she’s insisting they can’t be borrowed like credentials. The work has to be lived-in, not merely lined up with the moment.