About Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevenson (1933–2020) was an American-British poet whose work bridged transatlantic literary traditions. She was the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award. Born in Cambridge of American parents, she grew up in the States but lived in Britain for most of her adult life. Her father was a devoted pianist and lover of poetry and her mother wrote fiction and was a talented storyteller. Rooted in close observation of the world and acute psychological insight, her poems continually question how we see and think about the world. They are incisive as well as entertaining, marrying critical rigour with personal feeling, and a sharp wit with an original brand of serious humor. Stevenson was the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry and books of essays and literary criticism, including two critical studies of the poet Elizabeth Bishop. Her 1989 biography of the American poet Sylvia Plath, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath, sparked controversy; the ordeal that Stevenson endured in writing the book and in its reception were the focus of a 1993 series of articles in The New Yorker, by Janet Malcolm, which became the book The Silent Woman.Her posthumously published Collected Poems is a remaking of Anne Stevenson’s earlier Poems 1955-2005 (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), expanded to include poems from her final three books, Stone Milk (2007), Astonishment (2012) and Completing the Circle (2020), drawing on sixteen collections which are presented in their original order of publication.
Browse all poems and texts published on Anne Stevenson
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.
