“In the face of technological and consumer culture, Finch’s fanciful libretto opts for evanescence over irony, sensual pleasure over theoretical critique. Hidden codes and secret pleasures, nursery rhymes and popular songs, primordial ooze and joyous sound-patterning animate these pages.” – Jennifer Moxley
The Encyclopedia of Scotland, Annie Finch’s first published book of poetry, is a performance poem for soul-voice and attendant daemons, a passionate invocation to a Muse at once abundant and excruciating. Originally sung and chanted by Finch and other performers with a musical ensemble, this rhythmic feast enacts a complex ritual of self-initiation into the realm of poetry.
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“In the face of technological and consumer culture, Finch’s fanciful libretto opts for evanescence over irony, sensual pleasure over theoretical critique. Hidden codes and secret pleasures, nursery rhymes and popular songs, primordial ooze and joyous sound-patterning animate these pages. Friskily sporting with lofty tones and poetic apparatus, The Encyclopedia of Scotland (written in 1980) anticipates works such as Lisa Robertson’s Debbie: An Epic and Stacy Doris’ Paramour. Here is high artifice and sonic astonishment, here is a unique mind at literary play.”
—Jennifer Moxley
“Annie Finch can’t be a new formalist, precisely because she’s passionate both about the new and about form. She is also one of the great risk-takers in contemporary poetry, right up there with Lee Ann Brown & Bernadette Mayer in her willingness to completely shatter our expectations as readers. The Encyclopedia of Scotland fundamentally demonstrates just how deep Finch’s commitment to language is. It will force many readers to rethink whatever they may have thought they knew about Finch & her project heretofore.”
— Ron Silliman on “Silliman’s Blog”
