Dove's Commencement Address

I am extremely delighted to be here today, at the very institution where I have been teaching for the past twenty-seven years.

Although I have given commencement speeches before, this one is different; this is personal.

The job of a commencement speaker—I googled it, so it must be true!—is to dispense “life advice.” That seems the very opposite of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s definition of the poet as “a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” So I will not give you advice. The last thing you want to hear is advice—because in order to be effective, advice must be specific—and that, obviously, is impossible in this setting.

So instead of advice, I will give you wishes. Just think of me as a contrary fairy godmother or a wily genie.

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I wish you Hunger.

Of course, I don’t mean physiological want, but a continued spiritual and intellectual appetite, a hunger to know more, do more, feel more. When I told my graduate poetry writing class that I was giving this speech, I asked them what they wished they had heard at their baccalaureate exercises, and one young woman responded with a list of, as she put it, “some things . . . I wish I could have heard, if I’d had sense enough to listen.”

1. Life is short.

2. Don’t put yourself in a box.

3. There’s a reason certain people, places, books, ideas, etc. make our ears stand up; always follow what attracts you.

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And number 4, which to me is the kicker:

4. Passions are hard to come by.

When you entered this university, you wanted to eat the world, and all everyone else wanted you to do was to get good grades. And though your dreams may have been more nebulous then than they are now, they were no less intense. So keep that hunger; nurse it. Stay curious, want it all while it lasts.

I wish you Hard Work.

By that I don’t mean back-breaking labor, not the drudgery of the treadmill, but an appreciation for the work that comes before the big show—getting ready, honing your tools. Observation, research, practice—the actress Lupita Nyong’o gives herself homework whenever she has an audition. The classical flautist James Galway says: “You can sight-read better if you know your scales and arpeggios.” When my father sat me down for the “You’re-going-out-into-the-world” talk, his message was this: Always be 150% prepared! At 150% you’ll be ready for anything—even if you’re not chosen for a job or position although you’re the better qualified candidate. As the first African-American research chemist to break the color barrier in the tire and rubber industry, my father knew how it felt to be passed over. What he was trying to tell me was: The last person to hold you accountable is you yourself. In most cases you won’t be asked for more than 75%; in fact, depending on your race and gender, you might not be expected to give more than 50% of your capacity. But only you will know if you’ve done your best, so focus on that rather than what others think your best is—because if you allow others to tell you your worth, you will have given up on yourself.

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For me, a shy kid who trembled giving class presentations in high school, the 150% I had not ever expected to need came in handy when I received the phone call that I had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and would have to hold my first press conference. Six years later, when I was named Poet Laureate of the United States, that 150% emboldened me to write a letter on this University’s letterhead to then President-elect Clinton, suggesting that the White House spotlight the arts during Arts and Humanities month; and in October of that year, 1993, as my husband and I rushed to Pennsylvania Avenue right after my inaugural poetry reading at the Library of Congress to join the White House Celebration and State Dinner in honor of the Arts and Humanities, I used every bit of that 150%!

I wish you Uncertainty.

There’s only so much knowledge that can be taught; hard facts are just that—solid, dense entities, the stones in a swiftly flowing stream of possibilities. You cannot wait for revelation to come down upon you in a cloud of gossamer and angelic sighs; more often than not you have to seek it out. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going, but the only way you’ll find out is if you get going. That doesn’t mean that you rush off willy-nilly screaming, “I’m going to conquer this world”—but you do need to be bold enough to step outside of your comfort zone, even if it’s scary Out There.