Anne Stevenson Quotes
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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.
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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.
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I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.
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Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
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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.
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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.
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I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
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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.
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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.
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Looking back at it now, any objective account of my life is bound to read like a cross between 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' and a travel brochure.
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Many varieties of sonnet, of course, have been written over the ages.
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A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
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I never wanted to be a pop star.
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When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.
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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.
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Have you ever heard of a pianist who never had to practice - or of an architect who didn't bother to find out why buildings stand up?
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I truly hate marketing promotions, and I don't at all approve of encouraging wannabe poets to write bad poetry.
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I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
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Writing in a strict form can surprise you.
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I've cancelled all my subscriptions to poetry magazines. I prefer to read the 'New Scientist.'
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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.
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Poets these days, like artists and composers, have won for themselves almost unlimited freedom. You can pass yourself off as a painter without being able to draw, as a composer without being conscious of key relationships, and as a poet without making yourself familiar with traditional verse forms.
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I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
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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.