The Fiction-Makers

by Anne Stevenson

This new collection deals with how the language of imagination shapes histories and lives. The Fiction-Makers confirms Stevenson's reputation as a poet of intelligence, brilliant technique and penetrating insight. From reviews of Minute by Glass Minute : "Poems which are so good, so
flawlessly pure, that beside them most other contemporary poetry looks patched, clumsy or stuffed."-- New Statesman

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 1985

About the author

Anne Stevenson was an American-British poet and biographer.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book and some of the poems will be re-visited many times - particular favourites: "Re-reading Jane" (Austen), "A Prayer to Live with Real People", "A Legacy on My Fiftieth Birthday", "Red Rock Fault", "Willow Song", "Household Gods" and many more...

[Nick Swarbrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gannets Diving: plain speaking but an ambiguous theology and vivid imagery.
Forgotten of the Foot: a longer poem, but sums up so much of the ethos of Co Durham, with “the hills pillaged and cored...rows of stunted houses;” and having taught in “prim Esh,” a poem that speaks directly to me.
Spring Song of the Poet Housewife, where “the dust motes and the dust mice/are dancing,” the reason I opened this the other day while reshelving books - and maybe why I am writing this review instead of cleaning the porch.
There are lots of points at which this collection resonates personally, but this is local poetry that sings to a wider audience, with its jewel-clear language and images: after a gale, the shining wet town is picked up as “no roof that is not between light and light.” Poems for people, poems for places: poems of weight, and a simple quatrain as an Epitaph for a Good Mouser, which would count as a spoiler if I quoted it.

[Floris Meertens]

Met ongeveer 30 procent van de gedichten kon ik iets, maar ik kan niet ontkennen hoe gigantisch intelligent dit in elkaar zat.

Hoogtepunten: Household Gods, For an Unfinished Poem