EVE: From the Reviews

Annie Finch's first widely distributed book of poetry, EVE (Story Line, 1997) remains a classic, a collection distinguished by its distilled and fervent poetic power.

"Her shapeshifting may be more overtly metaphorical than that of the recently deceased Carlos Castaneda, but Finch's changes seem at least as significant and deeply felt. Castaneda's metamorphoses serve as passports to various self-discoveries. Finch's journey is toward an imagined paradise-toward the post-patriarchal possibilities of culture, language and human relationships, routed through the remnants of pre-patriarchal myths and folkways. Instead of peyote, Finch's chief mode of transportation (and transformation) is through incantational rhythms, imagery and rhymes. The poems take an even greater variety of forms than the poet. . . " — C.G. MacDonald, Poetry Flash Click for Full Review

I have read Eve with delight and amazement . . . I feel I know why Finch is so firmly a formalist; she is a little mad, and the forms help contain the madness. I'd give a great deal to have more of that madness myself. " —Carolyn Kizer in the Michigan Quarterly Review

These poems convey that they have summoned and commanded form, not the reverse--which is a way of saying that this is a genuine poetry." —Robert Pinsky

"Finch is a poet in her bones . . .What she proves in Eve is that rhyme-and-meter isn't just a formerly fashionable sort of bondage, the equivalent of a whalebone corset, but is instead a bio-acoustic key to memory and emotion, which existed prior to the written word. And it still works . . ."
—C.L. Rawlins in The Bloomsbury Review Click for Full Review

"Annie Finch has given us a book rich with experience, women's history, memory, and form. She has made form a one-eyed woman looking out at us, beckoning us to enter into her arena and be." —Sonia Sanchez