Anne Stevenson Quotes

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

The sea is as near as we come to another world.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.

There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?

There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.

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.

When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans. ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their philosophy.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.