Annie Finch Casting Spells An Interview by Alex Giardino oet, memoirist, translator, critic, arms that have answers for me, opened up my poetry to a broader audience, out- editor, and playwright Annie Finch has pub- intimate; a waiting bounty. side the American university system and the rela- P lished several volumes of poetry, includ- “Carry me.” She leaves this trail tively small world of poets. ing Eve (reissued in the Classic Contemporaries through a shudder of the veil, Often when I give readings or performances, Poetry Series from Carnegie Mellon University and leaves, like amber where she stays, someone comes up afterward and thanks me be- Press), Calendars (Tupelo Press), The Encyclope- a gift for her perpetual gaze. cause they’ve never met an “out” pagan poet be- dia of Scotland (Salt), and Among the Goddesses: fore. I know a couple of young poets who are pa- The poem is a tribute to my grandmother. I An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen). Her gan—Stacia Fleegal, for example—but it’s rare. wanted to acknowledge that she’s an entryway for newest collection of poetry, Spells: New and Se- Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Towler have edited an me into the mysteries of death invoked by the tra- lected Poems, is due out in February 2013 from anthology from Tupelo Press called A God in the ditions of Samhain. In the theater show where I Wesleyan University Press. Her poems have been House: Poets Talk About Faith, where I did an in- recently performed the poem, the director asked published in journals including Kenyon Review, terview about pagan spirituality. Maybe all of this my daughter, who’s twelve, to play my younger Paris Review, Partisan Review, and Yale Review will help create a further space, and we’ll begin to self and an older woman to play the grandmother/ and featured in many anthologies, most recently see other poets emerge as pagans. crone. When my daughter moved from the crone The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Amer- over to me, it seemed like a tangible reminder of ican Poetry. Her translation from French of the ag Alicia Ostriker wanted to ask about your the way our maturing as adults is partly about ab- poetry of Louise Labé was published by Univer- early religious upbringing. Were your parents re- sorbing the spirits of the dead. sity of Chicago Press and honored by the Society ligious? for the Study of Early Modern Women. Finch’s ag That poem reminds me of a spell, and “Spells” af My parents were both deeply involved with works of poetics include The Ghost of Meter, The is the title of your book of new and selected po- a range of spiritual books and ideas, and my fa- Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the ems, coming out from Wesleyan University Press. ther started the world religion seminars at Colum- Poetic Self, and the poetry-writing guide A Poet’s Could you tell us something about putting the bia. There was constant talk about spiritual mat- Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Shar- book together, and why you chose that title? ters in the house, but no religious practice. So I ing Your Poetry along with its abridged version, af The title Spells evokes my sense that poetry was thrown onto my own spiritual devices, and A Poet’s Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form. She is performative language, in the deepest sense— when I wasn’t tagging along with my friends to has also edited or co-edited a number of anthol- language that we invest with the power to change their churches, I was out in nature. At home, I ogies, including A Formal Feeling Comes, An Ex- us and the world. Spells also brings in the pagan would try to make sense of all the books around altation of Forms, Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetry, spirituality that underlies my work: the idea of po- the house—hundreds of books on Hinduism and Multiformalisms, and, most recently, Villanelles ems as incantations, heard with our bodies as well Taoism and Krishnamurti and Gurdjieff and Kab- (Everyman’s Library). Her poetic collaborations as our minds, that link us with the sacredness of balah and Christian mysticism and world my- with music, visual art, opera, and theater have nature and each other. thology and Sufism and Confucianism and Zen. been produced by Poets House, Chicago Art In- The book gathers a selection of new, and old, I tried to absorb all these ideas into a practice on stitute, Carnegie Hall, American Opera Projects, previously unpublished poems with what I regard my own. After I finally discovered paganism, I in- and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Educated at as the most important of my poetry, verse plays fluenced my parents, and they both became inter- Yale University, University of Houston, and Stan- and translations written from 1970 to 2010. It ested in goddess and female-centered spirituality ford University, she is a fellow of Black Earth In- also includes many of my “Lost Poems”—poems I later in their lives. stitute, founder of The Poets Theater, and cur- wrote in the 1980s, combining meter with exper- rently serves as Director of the Stonecoast MFA ag How has your poetry and spiritual practice imental language, which remained unpublished program, the low-residency creative writing pro- evolved together? Was there an immediate link be- until recently. So putting the book together was gram at the University of Southern Maine. She is tween them when you first discovered paganism? amazing for me; it felt as if I were integrating the writing a spiritual memoir and blogs as American different aspects and styles of my poetry, the dif- af You’re right—the poetry and spiritual prac- Witch at anniefinch.com. ferent parts of my poetic self, some of which had tice developed together, even before I was con- This interview with Annie Finch took place on been deeply hidden for a long time. As I look at scious that they were different things. As a child Halloween 2011, her birthday. the manuscript, I see that I’ve been writing spells I loved to hypnotize myself by repeating words all along, sometimes without know- Alex Giardino Good morning, Annie, and ing it. And that understanding gives happy birthday! Our interview today has an un- me a new impetus for my work mov- usual premise in that we decided to create a multi- ing forward. vocal conversation with other poets, critics, and translators, among them Kazim Ali, Charles ag Recently, you started a blog, Altieri, Tara Betts, Kate Gale, Forrest Gander, called American Witch, which marks Brenda Hillman, Cynthia Hogue, Maxine Ku- your coming out as a pagan poet, min, Ethelbert Miller, Patricia Monaghan, Alicia who celebrates an earth-centered, fe- Ostriker, Patricia Smith, and Crystal Williams, male-centered spiritual path. Patricia as well as your mother, Maggie Finch, who is Monaghan, the director of the Black ninety. It’s not only your birthday, but also Hal- Earth Institute, was wondering what loween and Samhain. In honor of all these occa- reactions your blog has received from sions, would you share some of your poem “Sam- readers, poets, and critics. hain” with us? af It was a bit scary to come out of Annie Finch Sure. I’ll recite the last two stan- the “broom closet,” but so far I have zas. received positive responses, includ- ing that my blog was chosen for a Samhain Sunshine Award and was named I turn my hand and feel a touch one the fifty best blogs for Wiccans, move with me, and when I brush by, of all things, a Christian educa- my young mind across another, tional group! One gratifying thing I am with my mother’s mother. is that the blog attracts readers who Sure as footsteps in my waiting share my spiritual interests, and they self, I find her, and she brings seem to enjoy the poems I post. It has Annie Finch JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 37 APR-Jan13-PartB-Final.indd 37 12/28/12 2:35 PM and phrases over and over. When I learned about tions, and then holding that form up in stillness, But I had no idea what I was getting myself into poetry, what I loved about it, and found very famil- each line of the form waiting to embody itself in [laughs]. iar, was how it could create a new consciousness the silent meditative darkness. The structure uses internal rhymes, full inside myself. The spiritual practices of paganism rhymes, half-rhymes, and alliteration; it has to can create that same state of mind. I suspect that’s ag You used the expression, “felt the feeling begin and end with the same syllable; the ends how poetry first developed, out of the altered con- of starting a poem.” Can you say more about of some lines rhyme with the middles of other sciousness of spiritual practice. It’s all about rep- your writing process? This makes me think of lines, and so on. So that is the “mathematical” etition, which is the root of poetic form. Reflect- Ethelbert Miller’s question about whether you see formula you saw. Around that time, I was hiking ing back on my childhood, I now recognize that a connection between a white space on a page and with my daughter on the Appalachian Trail for from the very beginning I understood poetry in meditation and silence. four days, and I brought the formula along with a pagan way.