Anne Stevenson (born January 3, 1933) is an American-British poet and writer.
There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
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.
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.
I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.
I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?
I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.
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.
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.