It’s the birthday of poet Anne Stevenson (b. 1933), about whose distinctive style it has been said, “Reading her, one is seldom if ever reminded of any other poets” (X. J. Kennedy).

Stevenson was born in Cambridge, England, but mostly grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, depending on where her father was teaching; he was the American philosopher C.L. Stevenson and himself studied under Wittgenstein. After Stevenson studied music and literature at the University of Michigan (she was a mediocre cellist), she married an Englishman and moved to England, Ireland, and finally back to the U.S. The married ended in 1959, and Stevenson returned to the U of Michigan for her master’s in lit, where Donald Hall, a Major Poet and General Big Noise, encouraged her to publish her poetry.

Then Stevenson married another Englishman and moved back to England and then Scotland and had a couple of children. In fact, Stevenson has been married four times, just like yesterday’s author (let’s keep it to three or under, people), and has now lived for many years with husband #4 in England. (Fun fact: in an interview, Stevenson referred to her current husband as “a benevolent English lawyer.” My own husband is most benevolent, but I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to describe him that way. Something to think about.) Stevenson says she has “lost any sense of belonging either to the United States or to Britain,” but her work definitely reflects her strong New England background.

When asked how she developed her distinctive voice, Stevenson said, “I’m sure you can never develop a distinctive voice or an ear for poetry by taking anybody’s advice. Or even by taking courses in Creative Writing. Like a musician, like a painter, if you don’t find you have ‘the gift’ by the age of eight or so, you probably will never find a voice of your own, though you may indeed learn to write popular poems.” Discuss.

Stevenson has published many books of poetry and a well-known biography of Silvia Plath, Bitter Fame (1989). One might start with her collections A Report from the Border (2003), Poems: 1955-2005 (2005), or Stone Milk (2007).

Stevenson’s poem “To My Daughter in a Red Coat” begins:

Late October. It is afternoon.

My daughter and I walk through the leaf-strewn

Corridors of the park

In the light and the dark

Of the elms’ thin arches.

(Read the whole thing here.)

Have a softly gray Thursday hoping for snow and stay scrupulously honest to the data.