The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse provides a new strategy for interpreting the ways in which metrical patterns contribute to the meaning of poems. Annie Finch puts forth the theory of "the metrical code," a way of tracing the changing cultural connotations of metered verse, especially iambic pentameter. By applying the code to specific poems, the author is able to analyze a writer's relation to literary history and to trace the evolution of modern and contemporary poetries from the forms that precede them.
Poet, translator, and critic Annie Finch is director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She is co-editor, with Kathrine Varnes, of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, and author of Calendars. She is the winner of the eleventh annual Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award for scholars who have made a lasting contribution to the art and science of versification.

The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse

Politics & Social Sciences

Finch, Annie

Social Sciences

Univ of Michigan Pr

Annie Finch’s Spells brings together her most memorable and striking poems written over forty years. Finch’s uniquely mysterious voice moves through the book, revealing insights on the classic themes of love, spirituality, death, nature, and the patterns of time. A feminist and pagan, Finch writes poems as “spells” that bring readers to experience words not just in the mind, but in the body. Celebrated for her extraordinary love and knowledge of poetic craft, over the course of her career Finch has shaped her own innovative and radically traditional aesthetic. Her strange but familiar metrical language decenters the Self, creating a new, more open emotional relationship between ourselves, other people, and the world. Spells displays Finch’s virtuosity in a broad range of genres and forms, from lyrics, chants, and narrative poems to performance pieces, poetic drama, and verse translation. The book also includes a number of new and previously unpublished poems, notably her 1980s-era “Lost Poems,” experimental work in meter that prefigures postmodern reclamations of poetic form. This wonderfully talented poet gives voice to the female and earth-centered spirituality of our era. Her emotionally eloquent and rhetorically powerful work will echo in the reader’s ear long after the book is closed. Check for the online reader’s companion at http://spells.site.wesleyan.edu.

Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Wesleyan University Press

A tiny book of poetic spells connected to elemental forces A tiny book of poetic spells connected to elemental forces East Wings choose the wind; sing us aware; Muse; spin; weave; spell; create in air In this micro-book, acclaimed "Poetry-Witch" Annie Finch harvests her Spells, spun at the intersection of magic, word, and world. These ritual poems invite readers to experience words not just in the mind, but also in the body and spirit. Celebrated for her extraordinary love and knowledge of poetic craft and commitment to female, earth-centered spirituality, Finch has created a haunting innovative voice and radically traditional aesthetic. As she observes in the book's preface, "Like sticky seeds when you brush past, these spells latched onto me, ready to be carried to you--to your power, your contemplative life, your ability to make change. Say them aloud, if you can; say them thrice, if you will. Use them to help you to cast a circle, turn the year, coven, create, invoke." Sample Poem: East Wings choose the wind; sing us aware; Muse; spin; weave; spell; create in air

The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells

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."

Carnegie-Mellon University Press

The Encyclopedia of Scotland

Reference

Caribou Press

Among the Goddesses is a powerful work that places abortion in a sacred context. Finch's "epic libretto" traces the harrowing journey of Lily (Lilith) through encounters with seven archetypal goddesses: Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, and Inanna. As Lily moves through friendship, loss, rape, and finally a mythic experience of abortion, she discovers her own spiritual strength.

Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams

Dramas & Plays

Red Hen Press

This book gathers poems on Goddesses by accomplished poets from around the world. The Goddesses invoked are Aruru, Atabeyra, Brigid, Cybele, Dalia, Friya, Kali, Nana Buruku, Neeli Mariamman, Nyx, Saraswati, Xori, and Zemyna. The poets are Ann Filemyr, Annie Finch, Judy Grahn, Anna Halberstadt, Yona Harvey, Jurgita Jasponyte, Raina Leon, Mary Mackey, Marianela Medrano, Monica Mody, Purvi Shah, Richelle Slota, and Arundhati Subramaniam. Each poem is followed by the poet's comments and some information on the Goddess.\nA video of these poems performed by the poets is being produced by Poetry Witch Ritual Theater in conjunction with the book. Both projects are created as part of the 2021 Symposium of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, honoring the centennial of Marija Gimbutas. 
The mission of Poetry Witch Press is to serve the needs of Poetry Witch Community; to support the return of the Divine Feminine through poetry and magic; and to share and celebrate the art and craft of meter, form, and rhythm. Poetry Witch Press was founded by poet Annie Finch in 2021.

An Exaltation of Goddesses: Poems for the Divine Feminine

Mody, Monica

Grahn,Judy

Filemyr, Ann

Halberstadt, Anna

Harvey, Yona

Jasponyte, Jurgita

Leon, Raina

Medrano, Marianela

Mackey, Mary.

Literary

Poetry Witch Press

The Goddess Poems: An Epic With Chants and Spells

Poet Annie Finch shares her lifelong passion for meter and scansion with poetry lovers and poets in this uniquely useful book. From the basic tools and fundamental 3 steps of scansion to the most complex metrical delights, How to Scan a Poem covers it all: accentual poems, anapests, trochees, iambs, dactyls, and more, with sample poems you can scan right in the book and explorations of the all-important connections between meter and meaning. The art of Deep Scansion you will learn here invites you to enter the poet’s own voice, mind, and inner ear in the most intimate of ways. “Scansion is widely considered to be a way of thinking—and yet it is a way of hearing, a way of feeling, a way of listening, a way of dancing. Truly, scansion is a way of living.” —Annie Finch

How to Scan a Poem: A Poetry Witch Workbook

History & Criticism

Though Eve may be seen as a symbol of the demonization of women, she shares many characteristics with the ancient mother-goddesses worldwide from whom her story derives. Like her predecessors, Eve brought both death and life to humanity. In some Judeo-Christian legends, she also persuaded God to allow humans to be resurrected. 
Annie Finch's book of poems reveals an original and unforgettable poetic voice. Finch's poems have a mysterious, musical, and passionate elegance, the work of a highly skilled and innovative poet. The different genres in Eve include a lyric sequence on ancient goddesses, a literary parody, a protest poem, and an original myth. 
Finch, whose work as a critic and anthologist is expanding the boundaries of new formalist poetry, presents a wide diversity of poems in this impressively crafted book. Her virtuosity encompasses traditional European and classical forms as well as accentual chant form and haunting falling rhythms. This collection heralds Annie Finch as a poet of grace as well as style, verve as well as form.

Story Line Press

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