Quote

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

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
Tragedy
Wonderfully
Poetry
Partly
Marriage
Ended
Others
Complexity
Book
Productive
Years
Explain
Six
Hughes
Wrote
Complexities

More quotes by Anne Stevenson

Image
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
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
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 married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
Anne Stevenson
Image
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
Anne Stevenson
Image
I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
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
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
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
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
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
Anne Stevenson
Image
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
Anne Stevenson
Image
Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
Anne Stevenson
Image
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
Anne Stevenson
Image
My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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
Image
A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
Anne Stevenson
Image
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