Anne Stevenson

Saying the World


The way you say the world is what you get.
What’s more, you haven’t time to change or choose.
The words swim out and pin you in their net

Before you guess you’re in a TV set
Lit up and sizzling with unfriendly news.
The word machine – and you depend on it –

Reels out the formulas you have to fit,
The ritual syllables you need to use
To charm the world and not be crushed by it.

This cluttered motorway, that screaming jet,
Those living skeletons whose eyes accuse –
O eyes and ears, don’t let your tongue forget

The world is vaster than the alphabet,
And profligate, and meaner than the muse.
A jewel in the universe? Or shit?

Whichever way, you say the world you get,
Though what there is is always there to lose.
No crimson name redeems the poisoned rose.
The absolute’s irrelevant. And yet…


*


Poem for a Daughter


‘I think I’m going to have it,’
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
‘Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.’
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I’ve never had you

as you still have me, Caroline.
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart’s needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom’s end. Yet nothing’s more perfect
than that bleating, razor-shaped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman’s life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.


*


After the End of It


You gave and gave,
and now you say you’re poor.
I’m in your debt, you say,
and there’s no way to repay you
but by my giving more.

Your pound of flesh is what you must have?
Here’s what I’ve saved.

This sip of wine is yours,
this sieve of laughter. Yours,
too, these broken haloes
from my cigarette, these coals
that flicker when the salt wind howls
and the letter slot blinks
like a loud eyelid over the empty floor.

I’ll send this, too, this gale between rains,
this wild day. Its cold is so cold
I want to break it into panes
like new ice on a pond; then pay it
pain by pain to your account.
Let it freeze us both into some numb country.
Giving and taking might be the same there.
A future of measurement and blame
gone in a few bitter minutes.


*


To witness pain is a different form of pain


The worm in the spine,
the word on the tongue –
not the same.
We speak of ‘pain’.
The sufferer won’t suffer it
to be tamed.

There’s a shyness, no,
a privacy,
a pride in us. Don’t divide us
into best and lesser.

Some of us, ‘brave’? ‘clever’?
watch at the mouth of it.
A woman vanishes,
eyes full of it, into it,
the grey cave of pain;
an animal drills
unspeakable growth for cover.

Outside, we pace in guilt
Ah, ‘guilt’, another name.

Not to reproach
is tact she learns to suffer.
And not to relax her speechless
grip on power.


*


Hearing with My Fingers


A house with a six-foot rosewood piano, too grand
to get out the door? You buy it, I’ll play it!
So now, as in my childhood, the living-room
has become the piano room, exercising,
like a sun, irresistible powers of gravitation.
How to walk past and not be dragged to keys
that free at a touch the souls of the composers?
The piano itself is soul-shaped. Like lovers,
our baby grands lay deep in each other’s curves;
players locked eyes across the Yin and Yang of them,
fingering delight in a marriage of true sounds.

How would a living-room live without pianos,
I used to wonder, beginning my before-breakfast
two-hour stint at the Steinway – scales, arpeggios,
Czerny or cheery Scarlatti, progressing through Bach
(stirrings in the kitchen, waftings of coffee and bacon)
to Scenes from Childhood that my hands, to my head’s
amazement, still remember after forty years’ neglect.

If I fancied myself an object of fate’s attention,
I’d take for punishment the fog blinding my ears.
What was I doing those waste, egotistical years
when I snatched what I heard and never told the piano?
I wanted a contract with love. I wanted the words!
And now, apparently, my fingers have forgiven me.
Wordless as right and left, as right and wrong,
drained of ambition, gullied with veiny skin,
they want to go back and teach my eyes to listen,
my heart to see … the shape of a Greek amphora,
plum-blossom after Hiroshima, harmony-seeds
growing from staves my clumsy fingers read.


*


Anaesthesia


They slip away who never said goodbye,
My vintage friends so long depended on
To warm deep levels of my memory.
And if I cared for them, care has to learn
How to grieve sparingly and not to cry.
Age is an exercise in unconcern,
An anaesthetic, lest the misery
Of fresh departures make the final one
Unwelcome. There’s a white indemnity
That with the first frost tamps the garden down.
There’s nothing we can do but let it be.
And now this you and now that she is gone,
There’s less and less of me that needs to die.
Nor do those vacant spaces terrify.


 

    17     Note on the text
    20     Source texts

from Living in America (1965)
    23    The Traveller
    24     The Women
    24     To My Daughter in a Red Coat
    25     Living in America
    26     Harvard
    26     Fairy Tale
    27     In Winter
    28     Love
    29     The Garden of Intellect
    30     Dreaming of Immortality in a Thatched Hut
    30     Two Quatrains
    31     Still Life in Utah
    31     Nightmare in North Carolina
    32     Nuns
    32     Ann Arbor (A Profile)
    34     In March
    34     After Her Death
    35     Apology
    35     The Dear Ladies of Cincinnati
    37     Opera Piece
    37     Sierra Nevada
    39     The Grey Land

from Reversals (1970)
    43     ‘Birth’
    44     Reversals
    44     Aubade
    45     Sous-entendu
    45     On Not Being Able to Look at the Moon
    46     Two Love Poems
    47     In the House
    49     The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument
    49     Stabilities
    50     The Victory
    50     The Suburb
    51     The Loss
    52     New York
    52     The Watchers
    53     The Takeover
    54     The Unhappened
    55     Morning
    55     One Sunday
    56     England
    58     Fen People
    58     In Middle England
    60     The Return
    60     The Mother
    61     A River
    62     American Rhetoric for Scotland

from Travelling Behind Glass: Selected Poems (1974)
    67     Siskin
    68     Generations
    69     At Thirteen
    70     Coming Back to Cambridge
    72     Theme with Variations
    73     Five Poems of Innocence and Experience
    73         The Crush
    73         The Marriage
    73         The Affair
    73         The Demolition
    75         Old Scholars
    76     Travelling Behind Glass
    82     On the Edge of the Island

Correspondences (1974)
    83     Correspondences: A Family History in Letters

from Enough of Green (1977)
    155     To Write It
    155     The Sun Appears in November
    156     North Sea off Carnoustie
    157     The Exhibition
    158     East Coast
    158         Fire and the Tide
    158         Summer
    159         The Bench
    159         Boating Pool at Night
    159         Winter Flowers
    159         The Lighthouse
    160         Night Wind, Dundee
    160         Aberdeen
    161     The Mudtower
    162     Path
    162     With My Sons at Boarhills
    164     By the Boat House, Oxford
    164     Ruin
    165     Posted
    165     Wanted
    166     Drought
    166     Ragwort
    166     The Minister
    167     The Doctor
    168     Enough of Green
    169     A Summer Place
    170     People Around
    171     Early Rain
    171     Respectable House
    172     Meniscus
    172     Resurrection
    173     The Sirens Are Virtuous
    175     In the Orchard
    175     Cain
    176     Temporarily in Oxford
    177     The Price
    177     Thales and Li Po
    178     After the End of It

from Minute by Glass Minute (1982)
    181     If I Could Paint Essences
    182     Buzzard and Alder
    182     Burnished (A Riddle)
    183     Swifts
    184     The Three
    185     The Garden
    186     Himalayan Balsam
    187     At Kilpeck Church
    189     Walking Early by the Wye
    190     After the Fall
    190     Whose Goat?
    191     Giving Rabbit to My Cat Bonnie
    192     The Fish Are All Sick
    193     Pennine
    193     Ah Babel
    194     From the Men of Letters
    195     Small Philosophical Poem
    196     He and It (A Pathetic Fantasy)
    197     The Figure in the Carpet
    198     About Crying
    198     Poem for a Daughter
    199     The Holly and the Ivy
    200     Transparencies
    202     Lockkeeper’s Island
    204     Earth Station
    205     The Man in the Wind
    206     Sonnets for Five Seasons
    206     This House
    206     Complaint
    207     Between
    207     Statis
    208     The Circle

from The Fiction-Makers (1985)
    211     From an Unfinished Poem
    211      The Fiction-Makers
    212     Making Poetry
    213     Waving to Elizabeth
    214     Re-reading Jane
    215     The Blue Pool
    216     Shale
    217     A Dream of Stones
    218     Where the Animals Go
    219     Musician’s Widow
    219     Gannets Diving
    220     Ailanthus with Ghosts
    221     Two Poems for Frances Horovitz
    221         Red Rock Fault
    222         Willow Song
    224     Demolition
    225     A Prayer to Live with Real People
    226     Forgotten of the Foot
    228     Signs
    229     In the Tunnel of Summers
    230     Gales
    230     Spring Song
    231     On Watching a Cold Woman Wade into a Cold Sea
    232     Household Gods
    233     November
    233     Claude Glass
    234     Epitaph for a Good Mouser
    234     Divorcing
    234     Hands
    236     Dreaming of the Dead

from Winter Time (1986)
    239     Jarrow
    241     From the Primrose Path
    242     This
    243     A Love Sequence
    244     The Morden Angel
    245     Naming the Flowers

from The Other House (1990)
    249     In the Nursery
    249     The Other House
    251     Talking Sense to My Senses
    251     Elegy
    253     What I Miss
    253     Inverkirkaig
    254     Icon
    255     Journal Entry: Impromptu in C Minor
    257     North Easter: April, 1986
    258     Night Walking with Shadows
    259     Night Thoughts and False Confessions
    260     And even then
    260     Call them Poppies
    261     ‘All Canal Boat Cruises Start Here
    262     Inquit Deus
    263     From the Motorway
    264     Stone Fig
    265     Cramond
    266     Celebrity
    267     Eros
    268     Three Poems for Sylvia Plath
    268         Nightmares, Daymoths
    269         Letter to Sylvia Plath
    272         Hot Wind, Hard Rain
    272     Seven Poems after Francis Bacon
    272         1    Study for a Portrait on a Folding Bed
    273         2    Study of a Dog
    274         3    Three Figures and Portrait
    274         4    Seated Figure
    275         5    Portrait of a Lady
    276         6    Triptych
    276         7    Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh
    277     Journal Entry: Ward’s Island
    279     Little Paul and the Sea
    280     Calendar

from Four and a Half Dancing Men (1993)
    283     Salter’s Gate
    284    From My Study
    290     Cold
    291     Brueghel’s Snow
    292     Four and a Half Dancing Men
    293     Washing the Clocks
    294     Negatives
    296     The Professor’s Tale
    297     Hans Memling’s Sibylla Sambetha (1480)
    297     Politesse
    299     A Quest
    300     Trinity at Low Tide
    301     Visits to the Cemetery of the Long Alive
    301         Hadrian’s
    301         A Sepia Garden
    304         Bloody Bloody
    306         Black Hole
    307         Lost
    307         A Tricksy June
    308         To witness pain is a different form of pain
    309     Binoculars in Ardudwy
    310     When the camel is dust it goes through the needle’s eye
    311     Painting It In
    312     Late
    313     Terrorist
    314     Two Poems for John Cole and One for Annabel Cole
    314         Dinghy
    315         Cambrian
    316         After You Left

from The Collected Poems 1955-1995 (1996)
    318      Occasional verses
    318         The Parson and the Romany
    319         Ballad of the Made Maid

from Granny Scarecrow (2000)
        I
    323     Vertigo
    323     Innocence and Experience
    324     The White Room
    325     A Surprise on the First Day of School
    326     Going Back
    328     John Keats, 1821–1950
    329     Arioso Dolente
    331     ‘Love Stories and a Bed of Sand’

        II
    332     Moonrise
    332     Clydie is dead!
    334     Incident
    334     Suicide
    335     Skills
    336     An Angel
    338     Granny Scarecrow
    339     Freeing Lizzie
    341     Phoenicurus phoenicurus
    342     Pity the Birds
    343     Comet
    344     The Wrekin
    346     False Flowers
    347     Kosovo Surprised by Mozart
    348     Leaving
    349     Old Wife’s Tale
    349     On Going Deaf
    350     A Luxury
    352     Oysters
    353     To witness pain is a different form of pain
    353     The Theologian’s Confession
    354     Whistler’s Gentleman by the Sea

        III
    355     A Parable for Norman
    357     Poem for Harry Fainlight
    358     Invocation and Interruption
    360     A Present
    361     The Name of the Worm
    363     The Miracle of Camp 60
    366     A Ballad for Apothecaries
    370     Postscriptum

from A Report from the Border (2003)
    373     Who’s Joking with the Photographer?
    374     The Writer in the Corner
    375     Washing My Hair
    376     Two Poems for Nerys Johnson
    376         Portrait of the Artist in an Orthopaedic Halo Crowned with Flowers
    376         Passing Her House
    378     Red Hot Sex
    379     Haunted
    380     Passifloraceae
    380     A Marriage
    381     Hearing with My Fingers
    382     At the Grave of Ezra Pound
    383     Skin Deep
    384     Cashpoint Charlie
    385     A Hot Night in New York
    385     New York Is Crying
    387     A Cradle of Fist
    388     Clovenhoof ’s-bane
    388     A Report from the Border
    389     Branch Line
    390     A Tourists’ Guide to the Fens
    391     Carol of the Birds
    392     To Phoebe
    393     Questionable
    393     Prophylactic Sonnets
    395     The Inn

Some Poems from Cwm Nantcol
    396     The Wind, the Sun and the Moon
    396     The Unaccommodated
    397     Under Moelfre
    398     Why Take Against Mythology? (1)
    398     Why Take Against Mythology? (2)
    399     Attacking the Waterfall
    400     Spring Poem
    401     Without Me
    402     May Bluebells, Coed Aber Artro
    403     Green Mountain, Black Mountain

from Poems 1955-2005 (2005)
    412     A Riddle for Peter Scupham
    412     In the Weather of Deciduous Souls
    413     An Impenitent Ghost
    413     Fool’s Gold
    414     17.14 Out of Newcastle
    415     It looks so simple from a distance…
    416     Four Grim Fairy Tales
    416         1  Rapunzel
    416         2  Sleeping Beauty
    417         3  Was Cinderella Ever Happy?
    417         4  If Wishes Were Fishes
    418     Christmas Comfort and the Green Man
    421     Toy
    419     As I Lay Sleeping
    420     Killing Spiders
    420     Melon meaning melon
    421     Toy
    422     Variations on a Line by Peter Redgrove

from Stone Milk (2007)
    424     Prelude from Piers Plowman
    425     A Lament for the Makers
    447     Near the End of a Day
    448     Stone Milk
    449     Before Eden
    451     The Enigma
    452     Waving Goodbye
    452     Orcop
    453     Inheriting My Grandmother’s Nightmare
    454     An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything
    456     Jet Lag
    456     City Lights
    456     Beach Kites
    458     The Blackbird at Pwllymarch

from Astonishment (2012)
         I
    461     The Loom
    462     Constable Clouds and a Kestrel’s Feather
    463     Bird in Hand
    464     Teaching My Sons to Swim in Walden Pond
    467     Night Thoughts
    468     Paper
    470     On Line
    472     An Exchange in the Time Bank

        II  Sonnets and Variations
    473       It’s astonishing
    473     Doppler
    474       After the Funeral
    474       Elegy: In Coherent Light
    475       The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves
    475       The Master and His Cast
    476     Not a Hook, Not a Shelf, Maybe a Song?
    476     How it is
    477     The Voice
    477     Caring More Than Caring
    478     Carols in King’s

        III  Ardudwy
    479     ‘Wind from the North…’
    480     Night Snow
    480     Thaw
    481    Spring Diary
    481     Arrival Dream
    481     Snow Squalls
    481     North Easter
    482     A Clearer Memory
    482     Then like a present
    483     On Harlech Beach
    484     Drench
    484     On Reflection
    485     October Song
    485     Goat Cull in Cwm Nancol
    486     Roses in December

         IV
    487     Photographing Change
    488     In the Museum of Floating Bodies and Flammable Souls
    488     All Those Attempts in the Changing Room
    490     Tulips
    492     The Password
     493     Five Poems in Memory of a Marriage
     493     A Match
    493     After Words
    493     Hotel New Year
     494     Epitaph for a Hedonist
     494     A Visit
    496     Demeter and Her Daughter
    500     Spring Again
    500     Notes

from Completing the Circle (2020)
    507     Preface
    511     Saying the World

        I
    512     Anaesthesia
    512     Poppy Day
    514     Sandi Russell Sings
    515     Defeating the Gloom Monster
    517     A Dream of Guilt
    518     Improvisation
    519     Completing the Circle
    520     Ann Arbor Days
    521     The Day
    522     Choose to be a Rainbow

        II
    523     How Poems Arrive
    524     Dover Beach Reconsidered
    525     The Bully Thrush
    526     Winter Idyll from My Back Window
    527     Goodbye & Cheers
    527     Shared
    528     Voice Over
    528     Candles
    529     A Compensation of Sorts
    530     After Wittgenstein
    531     Now We Are 80
    534     An Old Poet’s View from the Departure Platform

        III
    535     As the Past Passes
    535     The Gift Bowl
    538     Pronunciation
    543     At 85
    544     Notes

Appendices
    546     Index of titles and first lines
    557     Selected bibliography
    559     Biographical note
 

‘Her knowledge of botany, ornithology and other natural sciences is impressive, but her talent is for fusing the disciplines into an honest and humane account of our world, and expressing this through rhythm and form…She is wise without portentousness, her technique faultless and her imagination fiery, political and fresh.’ – Carol Rumens, The Independent [on A Report from the Border]

Anne Stevenson reading at the Scottish Association for the Speaking of Verse, 1986

Anne Stevenson begins by talking about her recent trip to France and the naming of her collection The Fiction-Makers (OUP, 1985). She then reads and discusses the following poems: 'from an unfinished poem’ (02:47), ‘The Fiction-Makers’ (04:15), ‘In the tunnel of summers’ (08:08), ‘Where the animals go’ (10:40), ‘Shale’ (13:52), ‘Household gods’ (18:08), ‘A prayer to live with real people’ (20:05), ‘Claude glass’ (22:28), ‘Re-reading Jane’ (24:55), ‘Making poetry’ (28:53), ‘Willow song’ (31:08), ‘North Easter’ (35:28), ‘Naming the Flowers’ (38:40), ‘Slow train to Carlisle’ (41:20), ‘Night-walking with shadows’ (42:48) and ’Swifts’ (45:24).

Reading recorded by Alexander Hutchison at the Scottish Association for the Speaking of Verse, Edinburgh, on 19 March 1986, © Estate of Anne Stevenson 1986, 2022, poems from Anne Stevenson: Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2023). Audio source courtesy of the estate of Alexander Hutchison, facilitated by A.B. Jackson. Edited by Peter Hebden, Bloodaxe Books.