January 3: Anne Stevenson (b. 1933)

I've lost a sense. Why should I care?
Searching myself, I find a spare.
I keep that sixth sense in repair
And set it deftly, like a snare.

--Anne Stevenson, "On Going Deaf"

American-raised English poet Anne Stevenson turns 74 today. She was studying music in college, a cellist, when she started becoming deaf, and turned to literature. (Stevenson now uses a cochlear implant.) She's published eighteen volumes of poetry, a biography of Sylvia Plath, and two studies of Elizabeth Bishop's work. Stevenson's poem "What I Miss" is about music and deafness; it dispels the common misconception that deaf people only experience silence.