A Quote by Anne Stevenson
Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
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I connect music to the emotions that come from relationships, so most of the songs that I write are inspired by those circumstances, emotions, feelings, all that kind of stuff.
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.
Feelings, emotions - they are neither right nor wrong. They cannot be assigned a value. Feelings *are*. By labeling a feeling wrong, you force yourself to ignore that feeling. And what you most need is to feel it, let it burn through you, then get on with life.
I've reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagistic poems. But I don't want to write poems that aren't necessary. I want to write poems that matter, that have an interesting point of view.
Write down your fears. Write down your thoughts. Write down the feelings you want to have. Just release it, don't ignore it. It's a lot easier said than done, but once you start practicing some of those things, you'll realize that you have a lot more control over your thoughts, your feelings.
How often in your life have you been criticized for having the feelings you do?. Did this make you feel invalidated?. How often do you simply stuff your feelings and agree with others, saying yes, when you really mean no.
Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.
I do bring my teaching together with my writing. I make students write in class, and do the same prompts I give them. I'm always on the lookout for teaching poems - poems that inspire me and my students to write poems in response.
I used to hide my real emotions in gobbledegook, like in In His Own Write. When I wrote teenage poems, I wrote in gobbledegook because I was always hiding my real emotions from Mimi.
When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.
Sometimes people think that regulating their emotions means trying to act as if they don't have feelings. But, that's not the case. A realistic view of emotions shows that we're capable of experiencing a wide range of emotions, but we don't have to be controlled by those emotions.
Poems don't have to rhyme... Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.
I don't write poems with a purpose in mind, but I'd hope that some readers would find their experiences mirrored or articulated here - and that the language would feel alive to them. Alive, in a way that is meaningful and pleasurable.
What do you have in mind after you graduate?" What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. "I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.
I don't think all poems need to be written in conversational language - those are often great poems but there should also be poems of incoherent bewilderment and muddled mystery.
I want to yell about it most days and stop strangers in the street to share my outrage. But my mind is too serpentine to offer instant poem reactions. I can however stand back and examine the deeper ground, or at least that's what I hope my poems are doing. I believe contemplation can be an ethical act and literature can be a profound agent of cultural change, so I hope in some way my poems expand the conversations about environmental decline and social responsibility.
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