05. Sep 2007

In Dialogue with Annie Finch

Annie Finch is a poet, translator and educator. She has several books of poetry, including Eve, The Encyclopedia of Scotland, and Calendars. She has translated the work of the French Renaissance poet Louise Labé, and published a book on poetics, The Ghost of Meter. Finch is also the editor of After New Formalism and the anthology, A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women; and co-editor (with Kathrine Varnes) of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Her most recent book is The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form and the Poetic Self. She is currently the director of the Stonecoast Masters of Fine Arts program in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine. To learn more about Annie Finch please visit her website.

ICORN:

In the introduction to the collection of essays you co-edited with Kathrine Varnes, An Exaltation of Forms, you describe your poetic vision as "Multiformalism". How would you define that, and what role do you think it should play in shaping contemporary poetics?

Finch:

Multiformalism is my word... [the term] encompasses much Language and experimental poetry as well as poems sometimes not considered "formal" from other cultures, such as Native American chants. Multiformalism might play a big role in shaping contemporary poetics, because it can bring us back to what I see as a "sustainable" poetics: a poetry shared across millennia and continents, a poetry rooted deeply in tradition and also open to diversity, experiment, and cross-cultural communication, a poetry that connects with and responds to many different kinds of human beings in the same ways that architectural elements can do.

ICORN:

You have translated poems from Russian, French and Anglo-Saxon, including a book-length French translation, and you have also worked with form poetry from many languages. How deeply did you feel it was necessary to immerse yourself in these languages and the cultures in which they were written?

FINCH:

As much as possible, I immerse myself in the culture, but I don't feel it is necessarily a prerequisite to working with the text. My primary goal is to create a poem in English that will be both moving to the reader and accurate to the meaning and movement of the original. Having a sense of the culture certainly makes it easier to bridge these two goals, but if I were drawn to translate a poem, I wouldn't let the fact that I hadn't yet travelled to the country stop me. With Russian, I worked closely with an expert on the language. With Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and French, I know enough to piece it together and then I ask an expert to look it over.

The reasons I translate a poem can vary widely. I began to translate French poems because of my excitement over the immediacy, sensuality, and feminist strength of Louise Labe's poetry; so in that case, one particular poet, her themes, and her voice, were key factors. I began to translate Russian poems because of my fascination with the amphibrach, a compelling meter used frequently in Russian poetry but rarely in English, so with Russian poetry, the rhythm of the texts was a key factor. So far all the poems I have translated from Russian are poems in amphibrachs by Anna Akhmatova.

ICORN:

Do you believe that the more deeply you explore the sensory details of another culture, the more faithful your translations will be?

FINCH:

I think that is probably true. I feel that my familiarity with French culture leads to more ease, depth, and grace in the translations. My experience translating from Russian has already led me further into that culture, and if I were to undertake a book-length translation from Russian, I would no doubt get more deeply involved still, if only as a matter of natural human curiosity.

ICORN:

How do you approach dead languages like Anglo-Saxon?

FINCH:

I learn as much as I can about how that culture worked. Perhaps more importantly, I then use this information to look for and focus on the common humanity shared between myself and the original writer of the poem.

ICORN:

Myths and epic works specifically have played a role in your own writing. How do you incorporate myths from other cultures into your own creative work?

FINCH:

Most of the myths I incorporate in my writing are based in cultures that are distant in time and space from my own. I have been especially drawn to female-centered myths, including goddess stories from many cultures, and I have written lyric poetry, narrative poetry, and dramatic poetry about a number of goddesses and mythic creatures. When I am writing dramatic poetry, the characters themselves free me to speak in their own voices and embody aspects of myself, whether Medea or a mermaid. So in my verse plays and opera libretti I tend to use the myths very creatively and freely. When writing lyric poetry, it is the opposite: I speak in my own voice, not in the mythic creature's voice, and I tend to keep the myth intact. Perhaps I feel more freedom and depth on an emotional level in my own voice, when I am responding to the archetypal version of the story, or to the version I knew first. When writing narrative poems, I vary my strategy. I have written one epic poem that uses goddess characters in a new way, but I also have a series of shorter narratives whose goal is to tell the original stories of the goddesses as accurately as possible.

ICORN: You have said that you believe that, as the body and mind are an integral part of the soul, sound rhythms are an integral part of the poem's soul. How do you think your translations change the soul of the original works?

FINCH:

The unique texture of the words and sounds of a language is a key part of the quality with which a language embodies rhythm. By using English words and sounds, my translations necessarily change the flavor and smell and vibration of the original poem. But I think that by at least moving with the original meters, my poems can help to convey some of the physical truth of the the original language's soul,

ICORN: You have also said that meter is the heartbeat of a poem. When working with foreign meters is there a change in your own heartbeat? If so, is it temporary or does it alter you permanently in some way, as a writer or as a person?

FINCH:

I like this question! Yes, there is a change in my own heartbeat when I work with new meters. And I feel that that change is permanent, that the meter teaches me new postures and interludes, just as learning a new dance or other physical discipline leads to a permanent change. This is one source of the hunger I have to work with new rhythms and meters; I feel that each new meter in which I absorb myself will teach and enrich me as a poet and also as a physical, spiritual and social being.