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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
Defined
Poetry
Feelings
Might
Human
Humans
Frailties
Thinking
Frailty
Poem
More quotes by 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
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
Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
Anne Stevenson
Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.
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 think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
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
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
A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.
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 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
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
Anne Stevenson
My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?
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'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
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.
Anne Stevenson
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
Anne Stevenson
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
Anne Stevenson
