Synopses & Reviews
Annie Finch is author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism, most recently Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreamjs and The Body of Poetry. Her book of poetry Calendars was shortlisted for the Fore Word Magazine Poetry Book of the year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award. She lives in Maine where she directs Stonecoast, the low residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.
Annie Finch's brilliance as a young poet lies in her view of the world as complex her passionate examinations of family relationships, of family history, of the search to understand one's place in the world are underpinned by a syntax and a poetic design equally passionate and complex. This is a formidable first volume of poetry.-Molly Peacock
Annie Finch has given us a book rich in experience, women's history, memory and form. She has made form a one eyed woman looking out at us all, beckoning us to enter into her arena and be.-Sonia Sanehez
Here is a poetry where a physical sense of the world and of spoken language gather force and energy from formal mastery. The cadences and patterns of Annie Finch's Eve feel like they have summoned and commanded form, not the reverse---which is a way of saying that this is a genuine poetry-Robert Pinsky
I have read Eve with delight and amazement....I feel I know why Finch is so firmly a formalist; she is a little mad, and the forms help contain the madness. I'd give a great deal to have more of that madness myself.-Carolyn Kizer
Review
Finch's generation of poets were not generally encouraged to explore the possibilities of form. Her impolitic choice was to use everything in the toolbox, and to learn to use it expertly. To debut with such maturity and accomplishment is rare. Here is a full-fledged poet that literary culture will need to track and study in flight, and who any reader of poetry will want to enjoy."
C. G. MacDonald, Poetry Flash
Review
Finch is a poet in her bones . . . . I found myself shocked with pleasure as image, idea and sound spun out in a perfect braid. And Finch manages not just in a few poems, but throughout. . . . Ill recommend it in the highest, with bells, whistles, fireworks.
C.K. Rawlins, Bloomsbury Review
Review
Finch abolishes linear time: past fables and present events coalesce. Einstein might have accompanied her on his violin. . . Whenever I get discouraged about some trends in contemporary poetry I think of Annie Finch, a shining light, and I feel better.
Carolyn Kizer, Michigan Quarterly Review
Synopsis
Annie Finch's debut book of poetry, Eve, is a classic collection of passionate, vibrant poems by a poet who has come to be widely known for her musical ear and painstaking craft. Organized around the themes of nine goddesses from cultures worldwide, the book deals with coming of age, nature, love, and female-centered spirituality in free verse and a wide range of expertly-handled forms and meters. This book's gems include the much-reprinted sonnet "Still Life," the feminist villanelle "Pearl," the haunting "Lucid Waking" and "Walk With Me," "Gulf War and Child," and Finch's reply to Marvell's "Coy Mistress."
About the Author
Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism, most recently Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams and The Body of Poetry. Her book of poetry Calendars was short-listed for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Award. She lives in Maine where she directs Stonecoast, the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.