Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010
Finalist, Yale Series of Younger Poets and National Poetry Series; Selected for reprint in the Classic Contemporaries Poetry Series from Carnegie Mellon University Press
“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. . .” – Molly Peacock
Annie Finch’s first nationally-published book of poetry, Eve, is a classic collection of poems distinguished by a musical ear, painstaking craft, and a passionate dedication to female spirituality. The book is organized into sections that correspond to nine goddesses from cultures worldwide.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rhiannon
Running in Church
No Snake
Zaraf’s Star
Spider Woman
Lucid Waking
My Raptor
Great Reading Room Murals
The Door
Inanna
The Last Mermother
Daughter
Strangers
Westminster
Coatlique
Still Life
The Circled Sand
In Cities, Be Alert
Insect
Three Generations of Secrets
Brigid
Sapphics for Patience
Inside the Violet
Pearl
Rain Birth
Nut
Frozen In
The Garden
Another Reluctance
Tribute
Aphrodite
Courtship
Coy Mistress
Being a Constellation
Walk With Me
Changing Woman
Ancestor
Gulf War and Child: A Curse
Thanksgiving
The Wish for Eyes
Eve
Encounter
Samhain
Diving Past Violets
Notes on the Poems
REVIEWS
"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
"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
"Finch’s journey is toward an imagined paradise—toward the post-patriarchal possibilities of culture, language and human relationships. . . . 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."
—C.G. MacDonald
"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 Sanchez
"Finch is a poet in her bones . . . . What she proves in Eve is that rhyme-and-meter isn’t just a formerly fashionable sort of bondage, but a bioacoustic key to memory and emotion. And it still works. Again and again 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. . . . I’ll recommend it in the highest, with bells, whistles, fireworks."
—C.L. Rawlins
"I have read Eve with delight and amazement . . . Finch does indeed abolish 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
Goodreads reviews for Eve
