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A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
Anne Stevenson
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Anne Stevenson
Age: 87 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 3
Died: 2020
Died: September 14
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Anne Katharine Stevenson
Feelings
Might
Human
Humans
Frailties
Thinking
Frailty
Poem
Defined
Poetry
More quotes by Anne Stevenson
Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
Anne Stevenson
I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
Anne Stevenson
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
Anne Stevenson
There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Anne Stevenson
There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.
Anne Stevenson
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
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
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
When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.
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 work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.
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 truthful as I can make them.
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
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
Anne Stevenson
A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.
Anne Stevenson
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
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
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
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
Anne Stevenson
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 court where predatory professionals can turn a dirty buck off the atrocities committed against children.
Anne Stevenson
