Classic Reprint

Expansive Poetry & Music Online Contemporary Reprint

Annie Finch

"No Snake," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in South Dakota Review.

"Running in Church," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in Agni Review, reprinted in The Dark Horse.

"Zaraf's Star," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in Telling the Barn Swallow: Essays and Poems on Maxine Kumin (editor, Emily Grosholz), University Press of New England

"Sapphics for Patience," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in The Formalist and reprinted in A Formal Feeling Comes.

"Inside the Violets," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in Southwest Review.

"Tribute," reprinted by special permission of Annie Finch,
originally appeared in Osiris, reprinted in Introduction to Poetry, edited by D. Gioia and X.J. Kennedy.

Annie Finch is highly regarded as an editor and critic, but we are about to be graced by the appearance of her first book of poetry, Eve, which will be released by Story Line Press in 1997. An essay by her appears elsewhere in this issue, but what follows is a selection of her poems, which have not only been published in some of the best journals in the U.S., but have drawn the attention of composers for obvious reasons. She has a lyric gift, expressed through formal prosody that does not restrict, but rather enhances, these pieces.

No Snake

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch

	



Inside my Eden I can find no snake.

There's not one I could look to and believe,

obey and then be ruined by and leave

because of, bearing children and an ache.



I circle down on Eden from above,

searching the fields in solitude and love

like a high hawk. She would never forsake



this place that's made again of memory; 

she'd wait in that tree below me, spring

out towards my growing shadow, let it bring

a sudden hope that she could coil free;



but she's not here. Only mountains that curve,

and dip around the valley when I swerve,

settle with dark heights, as I near the tree.

Running in Church

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch

		for Marie





Then, you were a hot-thinking, thin-lidded tinderbox.

Losing your balance meant nothing at all. You would

pour through the aisles in the highest cathedrals,

careening deftly as patriarchs brooded.



You made the long corridors ring, tintinnabular

echoes exploring the pounded cold floor,

forcing the walls to the truth of your progress: 

there was a person in this church's core.



Past thick stained-glass colors wafted and swirling

in pooled interludes that swung down from the rafters,

cinnabar wounds threw light on your face, where the

		pliant young bones were dissolving in laughter.

Zaraf's Star

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch





Walking changes as dusk starts to gather.

We're not able or sure anymore.

We don't know the path--and if we did know it,



we wouldn't go on.  We're afraid of the dark

lowering its heavy, long familiarity

down on the grass.   We're afraid of the night,



moonless, desert, California,

making us stumble.  We shouldn't be lost,

out here like demons just at the border



that touches us solid, as if we were gone.

She's leading me on a path as narrow

as sisters can share.  We pound back down the mesa.



Each of our feet finds its own way, delving

into the gulley whose trees never answer

until, with steps slapping soft as bandits,



I slow on the path, imagining horses.



Stretching necks right out of the stones,

out of the dusk where dark has achieved our

bodies, drawn by the strides that my sister



takes like a rider, Zaraf's Star,

Fashad, Kashmir, Arabian horses

raise her up with motionless shadow



so she can ride (like a rider, she walks),

cantering, encompassing the pace of the mountain.

Out in a landscape to curl or be curled in,



hunched like riders or curling like rides,

under the fairy-tale oaks of the mesa

that hide sleeping children or horses inside,



we talk about horses like hers who run carefully,

with thinner ankles, and mustangs who, fast,

wild grown, wild on the path to blackness,



hunger like stars reaching down for dark leaves.

Sapphics for Patience

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch





Look there—something rests on your hand and even

lingers, though the wind all around is asking

it to leave you. Passing the windy passage,

you have been chosen.



Seed. Like dust or thistle it sits so lightly

that your hand while holding the trust of silk gets

gentle. Seed like hope has come, making stillness.

Wish, in the quiet.



If I stood there—stopped by a windy passage—

staring at my hand—which is always open—

hopeful, maybe, not to compel you, I'd wish

only for patience.

Inside the Violet

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch





Beside the long hedge on my parents' drive,

where the gravel waited daily for their tires

to crunch it open, in the narrow band

of earth along the hedge that kept the loam's

thick secret from the shifting sun, I knew

a purple violet. It always grew there,

hanging its knotty shoulders in the shade

of large, more splendid leaves, its crumpled head

releasing toward the earth. 



			One day I crouched

to find its eye much closer than before

and stared inside. My own eye was lost

in the echoing hold of the raw deep I saw,

though my hands held back inside the driveway world

that slowed its pulse around me as loud sun

shattered all the gravel into shade

and stroked the earth.  The middle of the violet loomed;

its heart was peeking into me to hold

me like a violet, too.  As its yellow, strong

throat turned to me and opened like a door,

interior light poured from a silent sun,

flooding my face and choking my eyes, until

I stopped looking in violets.

			

Tribute

	by Annie Finch

	Copyright (c) by Annie Finch

	"You'll find--it when you try to die--"

		                    --Emily Dickinson





Of all the words that I can't live, 

I have elected hers



to haunt me till my margins give

around me, web and bone.



Her voice has vanished through my own.

She makes me like a stone



the falling leaves will sink and stay

		not over, but upon.

Annie Finch

A Formal Feeling Comes

edited by Annie Finch

Story Line Press

Return to home page page.