Art & Creativity Quote by Anne Stevenson

Anne Stevenson’s line reads like a preemptive defense against a familiar accusation: that “mind” poems are bloodless, all craft and no pulse. The opening “Yes” concedes the charge before anyone can make it, a small act of rhetorical judo that turns critique into self-definition. She’s acknowledging the stereotype of the cerebral poet - the kind who can diagram a metaphor but can’t risk a tremor of vulnerability on the page.

The pivot is in “but I hope,” which doesn’t deny the claim so much as soften it with humility. Stevenson doesn’t posture as a poet of pure feeling; she frames emotion as an ethical responsibility, something you can accidentally neglect. That’s the subtext: feeling isn’t a natural spillover of talent, it’s a choice, a discipline, maybe even a danger. Her phrasing implies that intellect has momentum. Once you start writing from the mind, you can keep going - elegant, controlled, technically impressive - and still miss what actually matters.

In the context of late-20th-century poetry wars (confessional intensity versus formal rigor, “heart” versus “head”), Stevenson stakes out a third position. She refuses the romantic myth that authenticity means unfiltered emotion, while also resisting the modernist temptation to treat emotion as embarrassing residue. The line argues, quietly but firmly, that thinking and feeling aren’t rival camps; they’re co-conspirators. The best poems don’t emote despite intelligence. They emote through it.