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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• Anne Stevenson:

  I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help rea

• Anne Stevenson:

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

• Anne Stevenson:

  I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate mo

• Anne Stevenson:

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

• Anne Stevenson:

  I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.

• Anne Stevenson:

  I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that i

• Anne Stevenson:

  I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen

• Anne Stevenson:

  I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

• Anne Stevenson:

  I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had

• Anne Stevenson:

  I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand