Anne Stevenson Quotes

26 quotes in 452 categories

• The sea is as near as we come to another world.
• Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
• A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
• Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
• You've got criminal courts and child welfare officials refusing to do their jobs and protect children so they can shift the cases over to family…
• I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I…
• I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.
• I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
• Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked…
• Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.
• Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and…
• 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,…
• I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of…
• 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…
• 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…
• I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
• I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.
• I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
• I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
• I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

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