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Annie Finch

Essays on Poetry

body-of-poetry-cover-e1383875917184

"Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default
accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible
for whatever the status quo does to you."  

                      —Annie Finch, "Letter to a Young Woman Poet" in The Body of Poetry

GENERAL ESSAYS ON POETRY

What is Poetry?
Adapted from The Body of Poetry 

Listening to Poetry
Harriet, Poetry Foundation

The Poetry of Autumn
Poetry Foundation 

The Poetry of Deep Winter
Poetry Foundation 

On Compiling a Selected Poems
Musings on the occasion of assembling Spells: New and Selected Poems from the Stonecoast Faculty Blog

Can Poetry Have a General Audience?
Harriet, Poetry Foundation

Valentine’s Day Recommendation
Inside Higher Education Journal

The Inaugural Poetry Test
Thoughts on the inaugural poem  for President Obama’s second inauguration

Annie blogging at the Poetry Foundation
65 posts by Annie on many aspects of poetry and poetics on Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation

 

METER AND FORM

The Body of Poetry
 Academy of American Poets website

The Freedom of Meter
The Boston Review

Trochees: An African American Tradition
Harriet, Poetry Foundation

Chas in Fourteen Lines: Reformations and Deformations of the Sonnet
Contemporary Poetry Review 

In Defense of Meter
Expansive Poetry Online

Review of Rethinking Meter by Alan Holder
American Book Review

Kegels for Poets 
Harriet blog, Poetry Foundation

What is Poetry?
at anniefinch.com

How to Scan a Poem
From A Poet's Craft

WOMEN’S POETRY

Why I Am A Women Poet
Harriet, Poetry Foundation

How to Create a Poetic Tradition
from The Body of Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2005)
Originally published on WOM-PO (Discussion of Women’s Poetry Listserv).

Female Tradition as Feminist Innovation
Poetry Foundation

How to Publish Women Writers
A response to VIDA’s “count” of the number of women in print

Visiting Carolyn Kizer: Mentorship From a Woman Poet is No Small Thing
Poetry Foundation

CONTEMPORARY POETRY

Kegels for Poets
Harriet blog, Poetry Foundation

A Moment with Maxine (and Robert and Henry)
Harriet blog, Poetry Foundation

Technology and Inspiration
Kritya Magazine  (India)

Visiting Carolyn Kizer: Mentorship From a Woman Poet is No Small Thing
Poetry Foundation

Widening the Conversation: Edward Hirsch Holds Forth on his Poet’s Glossary
Poetry Foundation

 

CLASSIC POETS

An Evening With Forugh Farrokhzād: Iranian Poetry Night
Harriet blog, Poetry Foundation

Discovering Dunbar
Harriet, Poetry Foundation

How Claude McKay Changed History with Trochees 
Lemonhound

On Leonie Adams
Foremothers Corner, Wom-Po Website

Phillis Wheatley and the Sentimentist Tradition
at Romanticism on the Net, issue edited by Laura Mandell

Dickinson as a Poetess
in Titanic Operas: A Poets’ Corner of Responses to Dickinson’s Legacy, ed. Martha Nell Smith

The Poetess in America
adapted from Annie’s article in the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Poetry 

MORE ON POETICS

An Unsung Singer
An essay from Legacy that analyzes the poetry of Lydia Sigourney in order to develop an alternative model of poetics in addition to the the ego-centered poetics of Romanticism and post-Romanticism.  The “sentimentist” poetic approach requires a completely different set of evaluative criteria from Romanticism; for example, it makes room for multiple voices and perspectives, assuming a permeable sense of the poetic self.  It is irrational to judge or evaluate the quality of poetry written in the sentimentist tradition according to Romantic standards.  Only by taking into account the model according to which the poetesses wrote can we understand, appreciate, or assess the the importance of their poetry.

Annie blogging at the Poetry Foundation
65 posts on Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation

 


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