I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry

Hear the voice of Rita Dove, who confessed with unflinching honesty: “I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.” These words are the cry of a soul burdened with the knowledge that truth, once spoken, may not be received as truth, but as commentary distorted by the listener’s prejudice. Dove, a poet of deep vision, feared that her art would not be heard for what it was—a song of humanity—but instead dissected by categories not of her making. Her apprehension was not cowardice, but the awareness of how heavy the chains of perception can be.

For in her time, as in ours, the poet who is Black, the poet who is woman, the poet who is young or old, finds that her voice is too often bound to labels before it can be heard. Poetry is meant to soar beyond boundaries, to speak to the universal, to awaken in all hearts the echo of recognition. Yet when ears are clouded with prejudice, the universal is diminished to the particular, the eternal reduced to stereotype. Dove feared this fate—not for her own honor alone, but for the sanctity of the art itself.

The ancients too knew this danger. Consider Sappho of Lesbos, whose verses of love and longing were immortal, yet whose name was tangled with scandal because she was a woman. The purity of her poetry was judged not by its music but by her sex, and her legacy has long been filtered through that lens. Or think of Phyllis Wheatley, the enslaved African girl who wrote verse in eighteenth-century America. Her race was the first thing critics saw; many doubted she had even written her poems. The art was hidden behind the categories imposed upon the artist.

Yet Dove’s fear was also a fire. For though she was apprehensive, she still spoke, and still wrote, and in doing so shattered the very filters she dreaded. She became the first African American Poet Laureate of the United States, her work read not only as “Black poetry” or “women’s poetry,” but as poetry itself. Her courage revealed that the true voice, if steady and unflinching, can cut through the veils of prejudice, though not without struggle. This is the heroic task of the artist: to persist even when misunderstood, trusting that truth will endure beyond distortion.

We must take this as lesson and warning. Too often we hear through lenses instead of hearts. We ask first: who speaks? man or woman, young or old, of this race or that—and only then do we weigh the words. Such listening diminishes both speaker and hearer. True wisdom requires that we lay aside the filters of prejudice, and first hear the art, the thought, the humanity. For poetry, like all truth, is not bound to bloodlines or categories, but springs from the well of existence shared by all.

Yet let us also honor the reality that race, sex, and age do shape experience. They add depth, pain, and color to a poet’s song. The error is not in acknowledging these, but in reducing the poet entirely to them. When we say only “this is a woman’s poem” or “this is a Black poem,” we cut the wings of the work, forcing it to crawl instead of fly. Rita Dove reminds us that a poem may rise from a particular place, yet still speak universally. To deny either truth is to fail the poem itself.

Practical actions must follow this wisdom. When you read or hear poetry, attend first to the humanity within it, not merely the category of its maker. Teach children to value voices for their music, their vision, their depth, not for the labels society attaches. And if you are a creator, like Dove, do not be silenced by fear of misunderstanding. Write boldly, speak clearly, and trust that even through filters, some will hear the eternal flame within your words.

Thus Rita Dove’s confession is both lament and courage. She feared, as all true poets fear, that her art would be diminished by prejudice. Yet she lived and wrote beyond fear, and her words endure. Let us learn from her: to listen with open hearts, to speak with fearless voices, and to let poetry be what it was meant to be—not a mirror of categories, but a beacon for all humanity.