All Books

These are Annie’s full-length books.  Click on the covers for more info. (For limited editions and chapbooks, click here)

A Blessing on the Poets

Sharers and savers, musers and achers,
You who are open to hide or uncover,
May language’s language, the silence that lies
Under each word move you, over and over . . .

”Annie Finch’s Spells is a pure tone that calls us home to the first impulse of poetry. We link to mystery. We lift off.”
—Joy Harjo

“An amazingly gifted voice at the height of her talents. Spells will simply leave you enchanted.”
—David Bowles, The Monitor

Gathering women who touch, who honor,
who loom traditions through the body of earth.
Please lend me your voices, and some of our stories,
to spiral this shell through the layers of sand.

“A book rare to find . . . because it engages spot on with the sacred power of Death. This book will be very helpful to women who have been struggling to come to terms with the spiritual side of abortion.”
—Linda Weber, counselor

“A ravishing contribution . . A remarkable achievement!”
—J. D. McClatchy, Yale University

Summer Solstice Chant
June 21

In the center of the new flowers,
a darker wing of flower

points you like a fire.

Point your fire like a flower.

“Annie Finch’s Calendars is the work of a major poet.”
– Charles Altieri, University of California at Berkeley

“This is a book that will last.”
—Patricia Monaghan

When mother Eve took the first apple down
from the tree that grew where nature’s heart had been
and came tumbling, circling, rosy, into sin,
which goddesses were lost, and which were found?

“Whenever I get discouraged about some trends in contemporary poetry, I think of Annie Finch, a shining light, and I feel better.”
—Carolyn Kizer

“A book rich in experience, women’s  history, memory and form.”
— Patricia Monaghan

 

Oh I hated each tread and each riser
Never hated anything so much.
Each blue trea. Each red riser. Each lichen-licking yellow metafour
Up up up up
nwod nwod nwod nwoD

“Here is a unique mind at literary play.”
—Jennifer Moxley

“The Encyclopedia of Scotland fundamentally demonstrates just how deep Finch’s commitment to language is.”
— Ron Silliman

The product of a lifetime of writing, reading, editing, teaching, and loving poetry, this unique, accessible, and delightful book is jam-packed with everything you need to know to excel at the craft of the poet, whether you are an accomplished poet or a student, part of a group of writers or on your own.

“This was the first poetry textbook that clicked with everyone in my class. Every one of them can understand it, and they rave about how much they are learning.”—Ivy Page

“Nothing Less than an MFA program in 800 pages.” —G.M. Palmer

. . offers a glimpse into the criticism and esthetics of a refreshingly singular critic. . . Finch revivifies the dusty vault of prosody with the arcane dexterity of a necromancer.
— Art New England

“The Body of Poetry seems a highly applicable must-read for any poetry enthusiast. It would work especially well as a textbook for any university course tackling the writing or analysis of poetry.”
—MiPoesias

Kiss me again, rekiss me, and then kiss
me again, with your richest, most succulent
kiss; then adore me with another kiss, meant
to steam out fourfold the very hottest hiss
from my love-hot coals  . . .

A passionate, and formally virtuosic translation of the complete work of France’s first feminist poet—and the first English translation to faithfully render Labé’s actual original rhyme schemes.

Poetry translated by Annie Finch, prose by Deborah Lesko Baker

A breathtakingly original—and highly readable— book, The Ghost of Meter develops a breakthrough theory that listens in a new way to the deep rhythms of poetry in our culture by combining semiotics and prosody.
—From the publisher

“[Finch is] a perceptive and aurally literate reader . . . I would bet that a whole generation of critics will learn from Finch how to hear the poems they read.”

— Style

Edited with Alexandra Oliver

“This comprehensive and joyous celebration of metered verse—from Shakespeare to slam poetry—brings together some of the best rhythmic lines in literature.”

—From the Publisher

INCLUDES Auden, Blake, Brooks, Coleridge, Dickinson, Dunbar, Fenton, Frost, Hughes, Longfellow, Millay, Nelson, Poe, Stevenson, Walcott, and many more

One of the most enlightening and informative poetry anthologies in the last decade  Metre is the heartbeat of poetry, what gives it its rhythm and conjures its mood, and Annie Finch takes the reader through the spectrum of metres to demonstrate the range and versatility of poetry’s patterns. — Jane Craddock, Nudge

Edited with Marie-Elizabeth Mali

INCLUDES Alexander, Alvarez, Auden, Bishop, Dove, Finch, Hardy, LeGuin, Liu, Merrill, Nelson, Peacock, Plath, Roethke, Siebles, Smith, Stallings, Troupe, Waldman, and many more

“A gorgeous pocket-sized collection . . . What makes this collection so rich is its diversity, how it veers from the comical to the metaphysical to the erotic and the political.”
—Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe

“Villanelles is a brilliant collection!’”
— “Best Recent Poetry,” The Telegraph

Edited with Maxine Kumin and D. Brown. INCLUDES Basho, Bernstein, Bishop, Blake, Bradstreet, Brooks, Cesaire, Chaucer, Clifton, Crane, Eliot, Harjo, Hejinian, Hirshfield, Horace, Lorca, McHugh, Milton, Moore, Nye, Olson, Ostriker, Poe, Pound, Sappho, Valery, Wheatley, Wordsworth, Yeats, and many more.

 

“An eclectic, stimulating, and informed selection of poets’ remarks on poetry spanning eras, ethnicities, and aesthetics.”
—— From the Publisher

“What a wonderful, valuable, and original book this is! . . . It has my highest recommendation.”
-Leon Stokesbury

Edited with Kathrine Varnes. Contemporary poets select a meter or form, describe it, and provide examples. “Achieving this level of eclecticism is a remarkable feat . . .” INCLUDES Ali, Baraka, Bernstein, Boisseau, Collins, Hacker, Hass, Hecht, Hollander, Holman, Hoover, Kumin, Morris, Nims, Osman, Schulman, Snodgrass, Warren, and many more

“This book deftly and enthusiastically answers the question of where poetry stands at the beginning of the 21st century. Highest recommendation.
— Choice

“An Exaltation of Forms is a revolutionary book!”
—Elizabeth Alexander

“A wonderful book. This unique and ground-breaking anthology also includes statements by the poets explaining why they write formal verse. Highly recommended.” —Starred Review, Library Journal

INCLUDES Alexander, Alvarez, Bruce, Cisneros, Clarke, Dove, Hacker, Kenyon, Nelson, Peacock, Sanchez, Sarton, Waldman, Wong, and many more

 

“Not only is this a peerless collection of poems; readers will also find the book invaluable for the essays on poetics. Each of the sixty poets includes a statement or essay about the challenges and rewards she finds writing in form.”—Kevin Walzer

“A unique and ground-breaking anthology.” —Library Journal

Edited with Susan Schultz. INCLUDES Juliana Chang, Rachel Blau duPlessis, Metta duEwa Jones, John Kinsella, Ku’Ualoha Ho’Omanawanui, Sonia Sanchez, Ron Silliman, Cole Swenson, and many more

“This collection of essays by important poets and critics investigates traditional and exploratory forms, as well as the ways cultures and histories have come to shape them. . . a necessary and lively reference to contemporary currents.”
—From the publisher

INCLUDES Agha Shahid Ali, Carolyn Beard Whitlow, Dana Gioia, Marilyn Nelson, Molly Peacock, Frederick Turner, Adrienne Rich, Anne Stevenson, Christian Wiman, and more

“After New Formalism is a landmark text in a still-expanding conversation  . . . This courageous collection of essays on poetic form from a diversity of poets heralded the changes that were to come to formal poetics in the 21st century.” —Kevin Walzer

Edited with J. Keller and C. McClelland. INCLUDES Carol Muske, Judith Johnson, Hayden Carruth, Marie Ponsot, Robert Creeley Lucille Clifton, Agha Shahid Ali, Maxine Kumin, discussions of politics, teaching, feminism, translation, and much more

“A major collection of poets pays tribute in criticism and poems to one of the great poets of the twentieth century.”
—From the Publisher