#he

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set. ↗

— Adlai Stevenson

#another #car #dreams #even #freedom

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. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#american #been #blake #books #favorite

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#art #criticism #dislike #function #help

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. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#complexities #did #ended #explain #hughes

If it seems like you're doing work when you're acting, then you're doing something wrong. ↗

— Parker Stevenson

#doing #like #seems #something #then

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

#condense #deal #emotions #enjoy #express

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

#ears #form #had #hard #i

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

#cottage #great #i #live #lucas

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

#half #her #i #just #knew

Everything contains its antithesis. ↗

— Juliet Stevenson

#contains #everything