Annie Finch's books of poetry include Calendars (Tupelo, 2003), shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year award; Eve (Story Line, 1997), finalist in the National Poetry Series; the longpoem The Encyclopedia of Scotland (Salt, 2004); and a translation of Renaissance poet Louise Labé (Chicago, 2005). Her collaborations include the libretto for "Marina” (Tsvetaeva), which premiered in May 2003 from American Opera Projects in New York. She has written or edited several books on poetics including, with Kathrine Varnes, An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (Michigan, 2002). Her new collection of essays, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, is published in the Poets on Poetry Series from the University of Michigan Press (2005). She lives in Maine and is Director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA at the University of Southern Maine. Buy her newest book here and her other books here. See some work here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? My early childhood was permeated with poetry I loved—from Edward Lear to Yeats. Three poems stand out, depending on how you define “love.” The first poem (as opposed to songs and lullabies) that my body ever loved was “The Night Before Christmas,” which was part of an annual ritual—my father would read it aloud with dramatic skill every Christmas Eve, probably just the way his dad used to read it. The triple rhythm really excited me. The first poem my mind ever loved was the excerpt from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” in my 3rd grade textbook—I loved the look and sound of the “p”s in “trumpet of a prophecy” and the passion of the direct address in “oh wind, ” contrasted with the helplessness of the following rhetorical question. The first poem my heart ever loved was E.A. Robinson’s “Luke Havergal,” when I was 12 or 13 —because it was so gorgeously depressing. After that point in my life, my soul began to love poems. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? There’s always something—cookbooks, children’s fantasy, anthropology—though it often has some kind of spiritual cast, so maybe those who know my work wouldn’t be so surprised. Right now I read Feng Shui books addictively. I dig the idea that physical objects carry spiritual/emotional charges. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Philosophy was crucial to my development as a poet and is still part of the bones of my poetics. My father was a philosophy professor/scholar who wrote on Wittgenstein, Simone Weil, and the pre-Socratics. We talked about philosophy a lot when I was growing up (I’ve written about the influence of these conversations on my poetry in an essay called “Coherent Decentering,” in The Body of Poetry.) In college I was especially moved by Kant and by Chinese philosophy. Philosophy helped me probe down and find out what felt wrong about some ways of understanding the world, and so to discover what I wanted to push against in my writing. Learning about the history of the subject-object distinction, and coming to understand its shortcomings, for example, helped distance me from much post-Romantic poetry—and it helped me understand how I wanted to position my own poems, to offer an alternative perspective on a very basic level. This philosophical perspective permeates many of my poems, even those that seem very simple and sensual. It might be evident in syntax, diction, imagery, or meter. I don’t need to think consciously about how it will manifest; once we have absorbed or cobbled together a philosophy, it shows all over our poems like a mood on a toddler’s face. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Many Greek poets are favorites of mine: Cavafy for his unique flavor of starkness and decadence, Elytis for his confident lushness, Sappho (whom I’m translating now) for the strength of her personality and voice. Louise Labe, whom I’ve also translated, is one of my favorite French poets because she takes on the tradition of heterosexual love poetry from a female angle. Anglo-Saxon poetry is one of my favorite traditions, especially riddles and “The Seafarer,” because of its elemental feeling, as if nature is at least as important as people. I enjoy African and Native American oral poetry for the same reason. My work with two twentieth-century geniuses, Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, has increased my appreciation for Russian poetry, its no-holds-barred intensity. Closer to home, a large proportion of my favorite twentieth-century U.S. poets are African American—Hughes, Lorde, and Sanchez in particular have a skilled dramatic, musical and often unabashedly popular touch that moves & delights me. Luci Tapahonso and Elizabeth Woody are two of my favorite younger contemporary poets, both Native American; I value their honest hearts and how Tapahonso’s openness to relationships, Woody’s to nature, refreshes and surprises their language. Agha Shahid Ali was another favorite non-Anglo poet. “Non-Anglo-American” actually opens up the whole British thing, which I probably shouldn’t start on—it would get too enormous. I also love poets of various traditions in translation—Mirabai, and lately especially Persian poetry—Hafiz, Rumi, Saadi—because they know how to get directly into the gist of spiritual things and still keep one foot in the world with humor and/or sensuality. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I do read a lot of poetry, tons of it, from manuscripts by younger poets for blurbing, to my peers in literary journals, to the greats of many eras and places, to funky things in out of print books. I love to read poetry aloud to myself, to read poetry quietly to myself, to carry a favorite book of poetry I’ve had for years around with my cup of tea in the morning, to open a new book of poetry from the bookstore, to read poetry to my husband in bed at night, to check out poetry on the web, to browse poetry in used bookstores, to read or recite poetry to students when I teach, to recite poetry by heart to friends and hear them recite it. I know my life is going the way it should when I am reading a lot of poetry. I would say reading poetry is the second most important influence on my writing—second only to the fact that I’m a feeling, loving, embodied human being living in nature. I love the way bits of poems I’ve read, maybe years ago, will find their way subtly, secretly, into the poems I write and surprise me when I find them there. And I Iove to consciously invoke or copy the form or some other aspect of poems I’ve read in my own work; it’s a wonderful way to pay tribute. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? Sssshh, is this private? I haven’t read every word of the most recent book I edited, An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. I’m working on it, but reading it all at once is just too rich—like eating all the chocolates in the box. So I didn’t read each word of some of the sections that I knew my coeditor Kathrine Varnes was reading; I am still saving some of them for later. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? A poem is words that fit together in a special way so it’s easy to remember and it sounds like magic. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? Definitely, I believe in a Role for the Poet. The role of the poet, as of every citizen, is to be first a fully engaged citizen, either of a family or a community or a subculture or a nation or the planet or of any other group that feels like the right fit. After that, the role of the poet involves becoming the wisest and most honest person you can; learning the craft of poetry the best you can; and then, when you are engaged in the ongoing work of being the most open and most skillful channel possible, allowing enough room in your daily life, and putting yourself in the right kinds of situations, for duende to do the rest. I know your question was meant to provoke an answer about what the poet’s role looks like from the outside, but I believe that part needs to take care of itself—and will, if a poet stays true to their role from inside. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**Lemonade Chiseled**Features I**Love Of**For Form**Function 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Whether I’m writing or revising, I focus until the words enter my mind in what feels like a physical way, often as a voice. There is a strong relationship with the body, because of the central role of the drumbeats of meter and rhythm in much of my poetry. The other day, for example, I was looking out the window and found myself just repeating the same phrase aloud over and over, half-singing. The next thing I knew, the next phrase entered my mind. If I am reaching for something harder to get, a more difficult feeling, I might put my whole body into it-- I dance around or walk around or say more words aloud to encourage the next words to come. And it’s not just my own body—I’m really aware of the reader’s physical reaction as I write; the sensation of skin and heartbeat or thrill up the spine I want them to have when looking at or hearing certain phrases or syllables. As I write, I feel those physical sensations, both the large wild ones and the exquisite subtle ones, and I feel my readers sharing them with me. It’s probably the main reason that I write. Sometimes this is not just a matter of reading, but a matter of performance as well. When I was writing a libretto, I would sometimes physically act out the words in scenes as I wrote, so I could imagine better how they would work in the bodies of the actors. Some of the poems in Calendars, particularly the season chants, were written or commissioned in order to be physically enacted through people’s bodies, in chant or ritual.