Home Birth by Annie Finch

In Home Birth, gathered together for the first time are all of Annie Finch’s poems so far about pregnancy, birth and nursing. The poems are intimate reflections, both formal and lyrical of a process which includes union, loss, maturation, and birth. Its ecstasies, its hurt, its surprise. As the eminent poet and critic, and former American Laureate, Robert Pinsky tells us of the poems in Annie Finch’s Eve, these “poems convey that they have summoned and commanded form, not the reverse–which is a way of saying that this is genuine poetry.”

An Excerpt from the Book

Two Bodies

Two bodies, balanced in mass and power,
move in a bed through the dark,
under the earliest human hour.
A night rocks, like an ark.

Home Birth includes poems from Eve and from Calendars along with previously unpublished poems.

About the Author

Annie Finch’s books of poetry include EVE (Story Line, 1997), CALENDARS (Tupelo, 2003), and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCOTLAND (Salt Publishing, 2004). Forthcoming are a translation of Louise Labe’s COMPLETE POEMS (Chicago) and a book of essays, THE BODY OF POETRY, in the Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press.

Formerly Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Miami University, she is now Director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA in Creative Writing and lives in Portland, Maine.