Quotes by Anne Stevenson

About Anne Stevenson:

Anne Stevenson is an American-British poet and writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Anne Stevenson

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 language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.

Anne Stevenson

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.

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truth...

Anne Stevenson

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 in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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.

Anne Stevenson

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.

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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

Anne Stevenson

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.

Anne Stevenson

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.

Anne Stevenson

Author Bio

  • NameAnne Stevenson
  • DescriptionPoet
  • AliasesAnne Katharine Stevenson
  • BornJanuary 3, 1933
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Critic
  • AwardsCholmondeley Award; Lannan Literary Awards