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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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Anne Stevenson
Age: 87 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 3
Died: 2020
Died: September 14
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Anne Katharine Stevenson
Wrote
Sadder
Laughing
Enjoys
Perhaps
Earlier
Quite
Melancholy
Enjoy
Poems
Today
Confusion
Persons
Unhappy
Person
Contrary

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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
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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
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There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
Anne Stevenson
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I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
Anne Stevenson
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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.
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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 am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
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 don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
Anne Stevenson
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When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.
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 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
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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
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My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?
Anne Stevenson
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A hobbyhorse can be a tiring ride for nonenthusiasts.
Anne Stevenson
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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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A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
Anne Stevenson