Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Stevenson
Age: 87 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 3
Died: 2020
Died: September 14
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Anne Katharine Stevenson
Older
Sylvia
Months
Plath
Knew
Shocked
Half
Month
Never
Personally
Suicide
Committed
Sorry

More quotes by Anne Stevenson

Image
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
Anne Stevenson
Image
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?
Anne Stevenson
Image
Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.
Anne Stevenson
Image
There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
Anne Stevenson
Image
Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.
Anne Stevenson
Image
Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
Anne Stevenson
Image
I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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