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 humour.
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).
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You'd think that in this foreign place, more strange withevery word and face, where taste and touch and sightdemand New Habits of the eye and hand,it would be easy to repelthe laws by which we know and feel.THE TRAVELLER
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(@BloodaxeBooks, 23 February 2023, e-book, 576 pages, #ARC from the publisher via @ edelweiss_squad)
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I'm familiar with the poet's work from various anthologies I've read and dipped into over the years. I tend to avoid reading mega-collection but a poet I'm not passionate about. Thankfully, Anne Stevenson Collected Poems worked out fine. I enjoyed all of the poems. As expected, they cover a range of styles and subjects. For the most part they are powerful and engaging. I especially liked To My Daughter in a Red Coat, Aubade, At Thirteen, The Exhibition, The Three, Shale, Jarrow, Elegy, Cold, The Parson and the Roman and The White Room.
