Quote

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

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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
Natural
Rhythm
Form
Musical
Hard
Ears
Trying
Worked
Work
Quite
Make
Possible
Strict
Within
Poems
Sound
Consists

More quotes by Anne Stevenson

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I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
Anne Stevenson
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I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
Anne Stevenson
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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
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I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
Anne Stevenson
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A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.
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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
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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
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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
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Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
Anne Stevenson
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A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
Anne Stevenson
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When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.
Anne Stevenson
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There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Anne Stevenson
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Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
Anne Stevenson
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I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
Anne Stevenson
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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
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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
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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
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The sea is as near as we come to another world.
Anne Stevenson
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Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
Anne Stevenson
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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