Annie Finch

Annie Finch (born 1956) is an American poet. She is author of numerous books of poetry as well as poetry translation, poetry anthologies and criticism, opera libretti, and poetic collaborations with visual art, music, theater, and dance. Her writings on poetry address topics including meter and prosody, postmodern form, and the place of poetry in contemporary life. She is also known for developing an aesthetic of women's poetic traditions. In the title essay of The Body of Poetry, Finch connects her poetry's frequent thematic focus on nature, the body, and spiritual issues, and also its attention to pattern and sound, with her earth-centered spirituality. Because of her efforts, in her poetry and criticism, to redefine the terms of discussion about poetic form, an article in The Dictionary of Literary Biography names her "one of the central figures in contemporary American poetics."