Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevensonis an American-British poet and writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth3 January 1933
CountryUnited States of America
poetry bears weight
Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
ocean sea world
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
thinking poetry feelings
A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
friends no-friends known
There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
horror century glad
I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
canvas violent slap
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
thinking poet should
I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
criticism poet should
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
criticism too-much kind
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
laughing confusion unhappy
My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.
marriage book years
I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.
memorable ideas giving
I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.
eye intuition judgment
There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.
summer dream rain
You sleep with a dream of summer weather, wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain. Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence. The mountains have had the sense to disappear. It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse. Glory rising like a curtain over distant water. Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark, docks in a pool of shadow all its own. That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck. Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.