Elegy for My Father by Annie Finch - Book Report/Review Example

Critical Analysis of an ‘Elegy for my Father’ By Annie Finch Annie Finch has made a for herself bynot only defining her style of writing but by defining a lot in modern poetry. Author of fifteen books of poetry, poetics, anthologies, translation and criticism including major work the Complete Poems of Louise Labé, she is also known for her continuous efforts to develop the women’s poetic movement and developing online resource like WOM-PO. She is not only known for the variety of poetic forms in her work but also for the liberty with which she has moved between these poetic forms ranging from simple, formal and traditional to invented, incantatory and chant-like. Right from beginning her work brought recognition to how she has brought music to meter without diverging from the truthfulness of her emotions which she wants to express. This musicality in her words later shows through when she wrote libretti for operas and lieder for contemporary composers. Her work shows not only the relationship between nature and human but also the themes evolving from her religious inclinations. Calenders has works woven around the cycles in a Celtic or wiccan calendar and whether the themes are based in myth or in real life relations they broadly cover the cycles in a women’s life. The works like ‘Elegy for my Father’ show not only Finch’s poetic prowess but also how a personal moment became the inspiration. ‘Calenders’ is one of Finch’s major poetry books which includes her works from 1990s as well as some poems from 1980s and one from 1970. The poems are written around the theme of Celtic or Wiccan calendar which reflects not only the seasons though titles like Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice, Lammas, Imbolc but they also bring the cyclical nature of time and specially a woman’s life to the reader. Many poems varying in style and ideas are written around themes which are more feminist like a woman’s cycles, her relationship with parents, her grievances, her pregnancies and her loves but in other poems which are not around mythical, like ‘Elegy for my Father’, Finch is inspired by some moment in her life. In Finch’s own words during an interview to Southeast Review: “With the “Elegy for My Father,”...… the whole poem developed from a particular moment of experience; now I feel as if the poem is a kind of shrine to that moment.” Calenders not only has a detailed account of how and when the poems were completed but it is also accompanied by a guide which is a complete work of poetics in itself. Finch listed when each poem was eventually completed and how the book evolved. The ‘Elegy for my Father’ is written in dactylic tetrameter and is unrhymed. Finch is not someone who is limited by meter. It comes as no surprise when we see variations of dactylic meter in the first stanza of this poem: “Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly Past the long edge of the last human shore, There are deep windows the waves haven’t opened, Where night is reflected through decades of glass. There is the nursery, there is the nanny, There are my father’s unreachable eyes Turned towards the windows. Is the child uneasy? His is the death that is circling the stars.” (Finch, Calenders 2003) The variations of dactylic meter range from the torchee in line 1 and 7, the cretic in first foot of line 2, bacchic in third foot of line 2, first paean in second foot of line 7, running start or extra syllable beginning in first foot of line 4 and catalectic or footless line in lines 2, 4, 6, and 8. The liberal mix and variations in the use of dactylic meter shows Finch’s freedom and exaltation with poetic forms. She is not confined by form but lets her inspiration carve the path to a form which is not always linear but is often a hybrid of several. In her own words “Sometimes I invent or choose a form to help me find a way into a poem a want to write (“Elegy for My Father,” “A Seed for Spring Equinox”).” (Finch et al, A Study Guide for Annie Finch’s Calenders ,pp.37) In ‘Elegy for my Father’ Finch in her own words “wanted to provide an earth-centered religious context for certain rituals of … death.” It shows the two strong points of her poetry: the spiritual themes which come from her pagan or Wiccan beliefs and the relationship between nature and humans. In he images of vigil evoked in this poem reader gets a feel of the pagan ritual of mourning the death of a loved one. The spiritual views which Finch follows so boldly and weaves into her works beautifully manifest in not only the themes in the poems included in Calenders but are also very vivid in the imagery used in the ‘Elegy for my Father’. The pagan theme in her work shows through in the imagery of this poem as well. In the lines given here the words and images of “temple”, “prayer”, “giving his body”, “symbol of wholeness”, “breath is a flame” and “cathedral’s new stone” paint the scene of the mourning and passage of a person into the realm of death with ritualistic and religious sanctity. It shows Finch’s command and love for an earth-centered religion. “A leaf is his temple. The dark is the prayer. He has given his body; his hand lies above the sheets in a symbol of wholeness, a curve of thumb and forefinger, ringed with wide gold, and the instant that empties his breath is a flame faced with a sudden cathedrals new stone.” (Finch, Calenders, 2003) Finch’s poems are written to be read aloud like a chant or ritual song. ‘Elegy for my Father’ shows the same feeling. Ted Richards wrote in Jacket Magazine that “Finch, who has described her work process as including the whispering or muttering, shouting or chanting or singing her words aloud as she writes, has brought that song into the words in a way that we associate with poets of an earlier era, like Tennyson or Kipling.” Another thing is the use of “you” and “He” for his father in this poem. “You’ for her father in the first part of the poem eliminates the distance between Finch and her father. In her own words: “I guess it makes the intensely solitary space inside a poem less lonely for me; it brings in a space for the deep communion that makes a poem feel alive.” It also creates the empathy in the reader towards the subject. In the later part with lines like “Night, take his hand” and “He has given his body” we feel the distance which is created by death. This creates that feeling of transition and distance which one goes through in the ritual of mourning the death of a loved one. In the transition from “you” to “he” Finch has created that feeling of departure just like creating “the most moving moments in an elegy…. when a poet juxtaposes the mourner’s address to the dead person with a sympathetic but skeptical testing of that convention: If the dead are forever deaf and inert, how can they hear what we say?” (Shaw, 1994) For Finch (2005) “the structural bases of poetry have been reorganized to reflect a new emphasis on the experience of the individual soul and on aesthetics of transcendence as opposed to immanence” and ‘Elegy for my father’ manifests it in every word. References W. David Shaw (1994), Elegy and Paradox: Testing the Conventions, The Johns Hopkins University Press. Finch, Annie interviewed by Proctor, Halley. (2009). Retrieved from http://southeastreview.org/2009/07/annie-finch.html Finch et al. (2003) A Study Guide for Annie Finch’s Calenders, Tupelo Press. Retrieved from https://www.tupelopress.org/includes/calendars.pdf Finch, Annie.( 2005). The Body of Poetry: Essays on women, form and the poetic self. University of Michigan Press Richards, Tad (2004), Jacket Magazine. Review of Calenders. Retrieved from http://jacketmagazine.com/26/rich-finch.html Read More