Annie Finch Quotes & Sayings

I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor. — Annie Finch

Point your fire like a flower. — Annie Finch

Criticism is to poetry as air is to a noise: it allows it to be heard; and even if we can't see it or feel it, it is there, shaping how we hear. — Annie Finch

The next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern. — Annie Finch

Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you. — Annie Finch

After all, what is lyric but the seamless fusion of formal control and passionate conviction, in the service of the expression of personal experience? — Annie Finch