Top 31 Quotes by Anne Stevenson

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I've cancelled all my subscriptions to poetry magazines. I prefer to read the 'New Scientist.'

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.

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.

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.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.