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99-851: Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long Loves Day. Thou by the Indian Ganges side Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood: And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of the Jews . My vegetable Love should grow Vaster than Empires, and more slow. A hundred years should go to praise Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast: But thirty thousand to

198-479: A creole dialogue between two black women concerning the nature of their beauty. Much of this display of wit hinges upon enduring literary conventions and is only distinguished as belonging to this or that school by the mode of treatment. But English writing goes further by employing ideas and images derived from contemporary scientific or geographical discoveries to examine religious and moral questions, often with an element of casuistry . Bringing greater depth and

297-420: A century and a half before in the many tributes paid to Donne on his death. For example, Jasper Mayne 's comment that for the fellow readers of his work, "Wee are thought wits, when 'tis understood". Coupled with it went a vigorous sense of the speaking voice. It begins with the rough versification of the satires written by Donne and others in his circle such as Everard Gilpin and John Roe. Later it modulates into

396-519: A fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.     Now therefore, while the youthful hew Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing Soul transpires At every pore with instant Fires, Now let us sport us while we may; And now, like am'rous birds of prey, Rather at once our Time devour, Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r. Let us roll all our Strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one Ball: And tear our Pleasures with rough strife, Thorough

495-481: A genre she calls "poetry ritual theater," combining multimedia poetry performance with interactive audience ritual; these including "Five Directions," premiered at Mayo Street Arts, Portland, Maine, in 2012, directed by Alzenira Quezada, and "Winter Solstice Dreams," premiered at Deepak Homebase, New York, in 2018, directed by Vera Beren. Composers who have set Finch's poems to music include Stefania de Kennessey, Matthew Harris, and Dale Trumbore. Trumbore's settings of

594-517: A graduate assistant, first at the University of Houston and then at Stanford University , where she TA'ed for Adrienne Rich 's "Introduction to Poetry" and developed an original course, "Women, Language, and Literature." She has taught on the creative writing and literature faculties of universities including New College of California, University of Northern Iowa, Miami University (Ohio), and the University of Southern Maine, where she served as Director of

693-615: A hundred indecisions ... Before the taking of a toast and tea". As Eliot's hero is, in fact, putting off romance and consummation, he is (falsely) answering Marvell's speaker. Eliot also alludes to the lines near the end of Marvell's poem, "Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball", with his lines, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question," as Prufrock questions whether or not such an act of daring would have been worth it. Eliot returns to Marvell in The Waste Land with

792-492: A love affair between two ghosts in a graveyard. The latter phrase has been widely used as a euphemism for the grave, and has formed the title of several mystery novels. Brian Aldiss 's novel Hothouse , set in a distant future in which the earth is dominated by plant life, opens with "My vegetable love should grow / vaster than empires, and more slow." Terry Pratchett opens his poem An Ode to Multiple Universes with "I do have worlds enough and time / to spare an hour to find

891-601: A model for later writers who might not necessarily commit themselves so wholly to it. Grierson attempted to characterise the main traits of Metaphysical poetry in the introduction to his anthology. For him it begins with a break with the formerly artificial style of their antecedents to one free from poetic diction or conventions. Johnson acknowledged as much in pointing out that their style was not to be achieved "by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes". Another characteristic singled out by Grierson

990-546: A more thoughtful quality to their poetry, such features distinguish the work of the Metaphysical poets from the more playful and decorative use of the Baroque style among their contemporaries. Ideas of Platonic love had earlier played their part in the love poetry of others, often to be ridiculed there, although Edward Herbert and Abraham Cowley took the theme of " Platonic Love " more seriously in their poems with that title. In

1089-406: A much more fundamental and interesting way than this simplistic use of the term." There are other allusions to the poem in the field of Fantasy and Science Fiction: the first book of James Kahn 's "New World Series" is titled "World Enough, and Time"; the third book of Joe Haldeman 's "Worlds" trilogy is titled "Worlds Enough and Time"; and Peter S. Beagle 's novel A Fine and Private Place about

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1188-652: A particular voice. The poems written by John Milton while still at university are a case in point and include some that were among his earliest published work, well before their inclusion in his Poems of 1645 . His On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629) and "On Shakespear" (1630) appear in Grierson's anthology; the latter poem and "On the University Carrier" (1631) appear in Gardner's too. It may be remembered also that at

1287-688: A poem like " Constantijn Huygens ’ Sondagh (Sunday) with its verbal variations on the word 'sun'. Wordplay on this scale was not confined to Metaphysical poets, moreover, but can be found in the multiple meanings of 'will' that occur in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 135". and of 'sense' in John Davies ’ "That the Soul is more than a Perfection or Reflection of the Sense". Such rhetorical devices are common in Baroque writing and frequently used by poets not generally identified with

1386-404: A rhyme / to take a week to pen an article / a day to find a rhyme for ‘particle’." The phrase "there will be time" occurs repeatedly in a section of T. S. Eliot 's " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock " (1915), and is often said to be an allusion to Marvell's poem. Prufrock says that there will be time "for the yellow smoke that slides along the street", time "to murder and create", and time "for

1485-529: A science-fiction collection ( Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction ), and a biography of the poet ( World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell ). The phrase is used as a title chapter in Andreas Wagner's pop science book on the origin of variation in organisms, "Arrival of the Fittest". The verse serves as an epigraph to Mimesis , literary critic Erich Auerbach 's most famous book. It

1584-692: A self-designed concentration in Versification under the supervision of Diane Middlebrook . Finch's first poetry collection, Eve (Story Line Press, 1997), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets . Calendars ( Tupelo Press , 2003), finalist for the National Poetry Series and shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Book of the Year award, is structured around

1683-629: A series of poems written for performance to celebrate the Wheel of the Year . Her third book, Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams ( Red Hen Press , 2010), which received the Sarasvati Award for Poetry, is a hybrid work combining narrative and dramatic structure to tell a mythic story about abortion. The Encyclopedia of Scotland was published in 2010 by Salt Publishing in

1782-714: A tension, only relieved by their resolution at the end of the poem, Segel instances the English work of Henry King as well as Ernst Christoph Homburg's in German and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn 's in Polish. In addition, Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is given as a famous example of the use of hyperbole common to many other Metaphysical poets and typical of the Baroque style too. The way George Herbert and other English poets "torture one poor word ten thousand ways", in Dryden's phrase, finds its counterpart in

1881-425: A whimsical tone of regret. In the second part of the poem, there is a sudden transition into imagery that involves graves, marble vaults and worms. The narrator's use of such metaphors to depict a realistic and harsh death that awaits the lovers seems to be a way of shocking the lady into submission. Critics have also noted the narrator's sense of urgency in the poem's third section, especially the alarming comparison of

1980-472: A woman poet." Finch's feminism is also evident in her prose writing, editing, and literary organizing. Her first anthology A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women (1993) collected poems and essays by contemporary women poets. The "metrical code," the central theory of her book of literary criticism The Ghost of Meter (1994), is cited in the article on "feminist poetics" by Elaine Showalter in

2079-414: A writer ("Poet and saint"), his governing focus is on how Crashaw's goodness transcended his change of religion. The elegy is as much an exercise in a special application of logic as was Edward Herbert's on Donne. Henry Wotton, on the other hand, is not remembered as a writer at all, but instead for his public career. The conjunction of his learning and role as ambassador becomes the extended metaphor on which

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2178-451: A young man he began work on adapting Donne's second satire, to which he had added the fourth satire too by 1735. Pope also wrote his " Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady " (1717) while still young, introducing into it a string of Metaphysical conceits in the lines beginning "Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age" which in part echo a passage from Donne's "Second Anniversary". By

2277-457: Is a gift." Metaphysical poetry The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of conceits , and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance. Given

2376-483: 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, but a bioacoustic key to memory and emotion." Cindy Williams Gutierrez made a similar point in a review of a later book: “Finch is more shaman than formalist. She is keenly aware of the shape and sound of her poems. Whether in a chant, sonnet, ghazal, or even Billy Collins’ contrived paradelle, her skill

2475-406: Is also the title of an episode of Big Finish Productions 's The Diary of River Song series 2, and of part 1 of Doctor Who ' s Series 10 finale. It is the title of a Star Trek New Voyages fan episode where George Takei reprises his role as Sulu after being lost in a rift in time. The title of Robert A. Heinlein 's 1973 novel Time Enough for Love also echoes this line. Also in

2574-560: Is effortless: Form is merely the skin that allows her poems to breathe with ease.” Poet and critic Ron Silliman has situated Finch in the context of experimental poetry , writing, "Annie Finch can't be a new formalist, precisely because she's passionate both about the new and about form. She is also one of the great risk-takers in contemporary poetry, right up there with Lee Ann Brown & Bernadette Mayer in her willingness to completely shatter our expectations as readers." The experimental aspect of Finch's work became more evident with

2673-557: Is heavily referenced throughout the 1997 film The Daytrippers , in which the main character finds a note she believes may be from her husband's mistress. In several scenes, the two Marvell poems are alluded to, quoted, and sometimes directly discussed. The line "I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow." Is used as

2772-536: Is in a confused mood of desperation, lack of orientation, irresolution and indecision. (Prentice Hall 1976, Chapter 31, p. 266). This line is also quoted in Ernest Hemingway 's novel A Farewell to Arms , as in Arthur C. Clarke 's short story, The Ultimate Melody . The same line appears in full in the opening minutes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger 's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), spoken by

2871-449: Is just "Time's Chariot". Brian quotes the line "Had we but world enough, and time" in season 5 episode 5 of Queer as Folk . World and Time Enough is a 1994 independent gay-themed romantic comedy-drama written and directed by Eric Mueller. In Frasier (season 10, episode 9), Niles, who has recently had heart surgery, says: "Good health is not a competition. When you've heard time's winged chariot hurrying near, as I have, every day

2970-482: Is quoted by William S. Burroughs in the last entry of his diary (July 29, 1997). The song "Am I alone and unobserved?" in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience contains the line, "If he's content with a vegetable love that would certainly not suit me..." in reference to the aesthete protagonist affecting to prefer the company of flowers to that of women. The poem, along with Marvell's 'The Definition of Love',

3069-456: Is seldom pleased. Johnson was repeating the disapproval of earlier critics who upheld the rival canons of Augustan poetry , for though Johnson may have given the Metaphysical "school" the name by which it is now known, he was far from being the first to condemn 17th-century poetic usage of conceit and word-play. John Dryden had already satirised the Baroque taste for them in his Mac Flecknoe and Joseph Addison , in quoting him, singled out

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3168-697: Is the Baroque European dimension of the poetry, its "fantastic conceits and hyperboles which was the fashion throughout Europe". Again Johnson had been partly before him in describing the style as "borrowed from Marino and his followers". It was from the use of conceits particularly that the writing of these European counterparts was known, Concettismo in Italian, Conceptismo in Spanish. In fact Crashaw had made several translations from Marino. Grierson noted in addition that

3267-458: The Commonwealth , became increasingly more formulaic and lacking in vitality. These included Cleveland and his imitators as well as such transitional figures as Cowley and Marvell. What all had in common, according to Alvarez, was esteem, not for metaphysics but for intelligence. Johnson's remark that "To write on their plan it was at least necessary to read and think" only echoed its recognition

3366-584: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Her essay collection The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self (2005) includes writings on women poets including Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Carolyn Kizer , Maxine Kumin , Audre Lorde , Lydia Sigourney , Sara Teasdale , and Phillis Wheatley , many based in feminist theory. In 1997, Finch founded the international listserv Discussion of Women Poets ( Wom-Po ). She facilitated

3465-690: The 1645 and 1673 poetry collections published during Milton's lifetime. The start of John Dryden 's writing career coincided with the period when Cleveland, Cowley and Marvell were first breaking into publication. He had yet to enter university when he contributed a poem on the death of Henry Lord Hastings to the many other tributes published in Lachrymae Musarum (1649). It is typified by astronomical imagery, paradox, Baroque hyperbole, play with learned vocabulary ("an universal metampsychosis"), and irregular versification which includes frequent enjambment. The poem has been cited as manifesting "the extremes of

3564-837: The 1960s, therefore, it has been argued that gathering all of these under the heading of Baroque poets would be more helpfully inclusive. There is no scholarly consensus regarding which English poets or poems fit within the Metaphysical genre. In his initial use of the term, Johnson quoted just three poets: Abraham Cowley , John Donne , and John Cleveland . Colin Burrow later singled out John Donne , George Herbert , Henry Vaughan , Andrew Marvell , and Richard Crashaw as 'central figures', while naming many more, all or part of whose work has been identified as sharing its characteristics. Two key anthologists in particular were responsible for identifying common stylistic traits among 17th-century poets. Herbert Grierson 's Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of

3663-679: The Diversity of Their Art , Villanelles , and Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters . She has also authored a poetry-writing textbook, A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. At a time when Emily Dickinson was the only nineteenth-century woman poet receiving critical attention, Finch's 1987 article "The Sentimental Poetess in the World: Metaphor and Subjectivity in Lydia Sigourney 's Nature Poetry" approached Sigourney through postmodern theories of

3762-541: The Divine (accompanying the commemorative sculpture by Meredith Bergmann ). She has written that she believes it is part of her calling as a poet to compose occasional poetry on topics of personal and cultural importance. Finch's dedication to writing in meter and her role as a scholar, editor, and critic of poetic form led some reviewers of her first books to classify her poetry within the movement known as New Formalism . Dictionary of Literary Biography named her "one of

3861-557: The Iron gates of Life. Thus, though we cannot make our Sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. " To His Coy Mistress " is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60). It was published posthumously in 1681. This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly

3960-430: The Metaphysical canon have included sacred poets of both England and America who had been virtually unknown for centuries. John Norris was better known as a Platonist philosopher. Thomas Traherne 's poetry remained unpublished until the start of the 20th century. The work of Edward Taylor , who is now counted as the outstanding English-language poet of North America, was only discovered in 1937. Johnson's definition of

4059-754: The Metaphysical poets was that of a hostile critic looking back at the style of the previous century. In 1958 Alvarez proposed an alternative approach in a series of lectures eventually published as The School of Donne . This was to look at the practice and self-definition of the circle of friends about Donne, who were the recipients of many of his verse letters. They were a group of some fifteen young professionals with an interest in poetry, many of them poets themselves although, like Donne for much of his life, few of them published their work. Instead, copies were circulated in manuscript among them. Uncertain ascriptions resulted in some poems from their fraternity being ascribed to Donne by later editors. A younger second generation

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4158-500: The Metaphysical style. Another striking example occurs in Baroque poems celebrating "black beauty", built on the opposition between the norm of feminine beauty and instances that challenge that commonplace. There are examples in sonnets by Philip Sidney , where the key contrast is between 'black' and 'bright'; by Shakespeare, contrasting 'black' and various meanings of 'fair'; and by Edward Herbert, where black, dark and night contrast with light, bright and spark. Black hair and eyes are

4257-542: The Ramists Neologists against Lutherans Spinozists against Dutch Calvinists Deists against Anglicanism John Locke against Bishop Stillingfleet Johnson's assessment of "metaphysical poetry" was not at all flattering: The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such verses as stood

4356-655: The Seventeenth Century (1921) was important in defining the Metaphysical canon. In addition, Helen Gardner 's Metaphysical Poets (1957) included 'proto-metaphysical' writers such as William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh and, extending into the Restoration , brought in Edmund Waller and Rochester . While comprehensive, her selection, as Burrow remarks, so dilutes the style as to make it "virtually coextensive with seventeenth-century poetry". Late additions to

4455-516: The U.K.; in the same year, Carnegie Mellon University Press reissued Eve in the Contemporary Classics Poetry Series. Spells: New and Selected Poems ( Wesleyan University Press , 2012), collects poems from each of Finch's previous books along with previously unpublished poems. The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells (2019), also from Wesleyan University Press, offers small spells of fewer than eight lines, gathered by Finch from

4554-435: The beginning of the 17th century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". This does not necessarily imply that he intended "metaphysical" to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably referring to a witticism of John Dryden , who said of John Donne : He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes

4653-541: The best recognised carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army , Sir Thomas Fairfax . The speaker of the poem starts by addressing a woman who has been slow to respond to his romantic advances. In the first stanza he describes how he would pay court to her if he were to be unencumbered by

4752-489: The carrier Thomas Hobson were a succession of high-spirited paradoxes. What was then titled "An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" was included anonymously among the poems prefacing the second folio publication of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. The poems on Thomas Hobson were anthologised in collections titled A Banquet of Jests (1640, reprinted 1657) and Wit Restor’d (1685), bracketing both

4851-434: The central figures in contemporary American poetry" for her role in the reclamation of poetic form. But reviewers soon noticed key differences between Finch's poetry and that of other new formalist poets. Henry Taylor , for example, claimed that Finch was not a typical new formalist because she did not focus on the realities of contemporary life, and C.L. Rawlins emphasized the incantatory use of form in Eve , writing, "Finch

4950-597: The characteristics of The Baroque Poem , but he goes on to compare the work of several other Metaphysical poets to their counterparts in both Western and Eastern Europe. The use of conceits was common not only across the Continent, but also elsewhere in England among the Cavalier poets , including such elegists of Donne as Carew and Godolphin. As an example of the rhetorical way in which various forms of repetition accumulate in creating

5049-434: The community of readers is to survey who speaks of whom, and in what manner, in their poetry. On the death of Donne, it is natural that his friend Edward Herbert should write him an elegy full of high-flown and exaggerated Metaphysical logic. In a similar way, Abraham Cowley marks the deaths of Crashaw and of another member of Donne's literary circle, Henry Wotton . Here, however, though Cowley acknowledges Crashaw briefly as

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5148-487: The constraints of a normal lifespan. He could spend centuries admiring each part of her body and her resistance to his advances (i.e., coyness) would not discourage him. In the second stanza, he laments how short human life is. Once life is over, the speaker contends, the opportunity to enjoy one another is gone, as no one embraces in death. In the last stanza, the speaker urges the woman to requite his efforts, and argues that in loving one another with passion they will both make

5247-610: The day, stating, "And at my back it seems to hear / Some winged curved chariot hurrying near. / What impudence! What conceit! / I really was fed up." The line "A fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace" appears in Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary . One of the Flavia de Luce novels by Alan Bradley is titled “the Grave’s a Fine and Private Place”. The line "My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow"

5346-400: The field of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a Hugo -nominated short story whose title, " Vaster than Empires and More Slow ", is taken from the poem. Ian Watson notes the debt of this story to Marvell, "whose complex and allusive poems are of a later form of pastoral to that which I shall refer, and, like Marvell, Le Guin's nature references are, as I want to argue, "pastoral" in

5445-514: The growth and decline of empires. In his poem, the speaker, lying on the ground at sunset, feels "the rising of the night". He visualizes sunset, moving from east to west geographically, overtaking the great civilizations of the past, and feels "how swift how secretly / The shadow of the night comes on." B. F. Skinner quotes "But at my back I always hear / Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near", through his character Professor Burris in Walden Two , who

5544-551: The heterodox Great Tew Circle . They also served as courtiers , as did another contributor, Endymion Porter . In addition, Carew had been in the service of Edward Herbert. Isaac Walton 's link with Donne's circle was more tangential. He had friends within the Great Tew Circle but at the time of his elegy was working as a researcher for Henry Wotton, who intended writing a life of the poet. This project Walton inherited after his death, publishing it under his own name in 1640; it

5643-525: The history of the English language with Marie Borroff , and Versification with Penelope Laurans, graduating magna cum laude in 1979. After traveling in Africa with painter Alix Bacon, in the early eighties she settled in New York's East Village, where she worked at Natural History Magazine and self-published and performed the rhythmical experimental longpoem The Encyclopedia of Scotland. In 1984, Finch encountered

5742-517: The lack of coherence as a movement, and the diversity of style among poets, it has been suggested that calling them Baroque poets after their era might be more useful. Once the Metaphysical style was established, however, it was occasionally adopted by other and especially younger poets to fit appropriate circumstances. In the chapter on Abraham Cowley in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), Samuel Johnson refers to

5841-424: The lines "But at my back in a cold blast I hear / The rattle of the bones" (Part III, line 185) and "But at my back from time to time I hear / The sound of horns and motors" (Part III, line 196). The line "deserts of vast eternity" is used in the novel Orlando: A Biography , by Virginia Woolf, which was published in 1928. Archibald MacLeish 's poem " You, Andrew Marvell ", alludes to the passage of time and to

5940-431: The listserv until 2004 when she passed ownership of the list to Amy King . In October 2016, anticipating the #MeToo movement, Finch became one of the first victims of sexual assault in the literary world to name writers, editors, and teachers who had sexually assaulted her during her career. In 2019 Finch launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the publication of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion , which

6039-581: The longer poems of Spells. Finch's poems are collected in anthologies including the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day , Penguin Book of The Sonnet , Norton Anthology of World Poetry , and Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry . Her poems for public occasions include a Phi Beta Kappa poem for Yale University and the memorial poem for the September 11 attacks installed in New York's Cathedral of St. John

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6138-433: The lovers to "amorous birds of prey". At least two poets have taken up the challenge of responding to Marvell's poem in the character of the lady so addressed. Annie Finch 's "Coy Mistress" suggests that poetry is a more fitting use of their time than lovemaking, while A.D. Hope 's "His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell" turns down the offered seduction outright. Many authors have borrowed the phrase "World enough and time" from

6237-468: The metaphysical style", but in this it sits well with others there that are like it: John Denham 's "Elegy on the death of Henry Lord Hastings", for example, or Marvell's rather smoother "Upon the death of the Lord Hastings". The several correspondences among the poems there are sometimes explained as the result of the book's making a covert Royalist statement. In the political circumstances following

6336-696: The mind but in the body." Finch started a blog called American Witch in 2010 and has published several articles about earth-centered spirituality in The Huffington Post . Finch's dramatic works of poetry include The Encyclopedia of Scotland (1983), originally performed in a libretto version with live music, as well as Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010) and Wolf Song, which premiered at Portland, Maine's Mayo Street Arts in 2012. Both plays were collaborative productions incorporating music, dance, puppets, and masks. Finch has also written and performed several works in

6435-605: The minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this...Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault. Probably the only writer before Dryden to speak of the new style of poetry was Drummond of Hawthornden , who in an undated letter from the 1630s made the charge that "some men of late, transformers of everything, consulted upon her reformation, and endeavoured to abstract her to metaphysical ideas and scholastical quiddities, denuding her of her own habits, and those ornaments with which she hath amused

6534-549: The most of the brief time they have to live. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter and rhymes in couplets. The first verse paragraph ("Had we...") is ten couplets long, the second ("But...") six, and the third ("Now therefore...") seven. The logical form of the poem runs: if... but... therefore.... Until recently, "To His Coy Mistress" had been received by many as a poem that follows the traditional conventions of carpe diem love poetry. Some modern critics, however, argue Marvell's use of complex and ambiguous metaphors challenges

6633-461: The natural world and her perception of the self as part of nature." In an interview Finch stated, "Some of my poems are lyric, some narrative, some dramatic, and some meditative, but all are concerned with the mystery of the embodied sacred.". Finch writes in the preface of her 2013 collection Spells: New and Selected Poems that she considers her poems and verse plays to be "spells" whose rhythm and form invite readers "to experience words not just in

6732-521: The passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry." A further two decades later, a hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a "high Anglican and royalist literary history" on 17th-century English poetry. But Colin Burrow's dissenting opinion, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , is that

6831-421: The perceived notions of the poem. It as well raises suspicion of irony and deludes the reader with its inappropriate and jarring imagery . Some critics believe the poem is an ironic statement on sexual seduction. They reject the idea that Marvell's poem carries a serious and solemn mood. Rather, the poem's opening lines—"Had we but world enough, and time/ This coyness, Lady, were no crime"—seems to suggest quite

6930-432: The place of the earlier discussion of the metaphysical". Southwell counts as a notable pioneer of the style, in part because his formative years were spent outside England. And the circumstance that Crashaw's later life was also spent outside England contributed to making him, in the eyes of Mario Praz , "the greatest exponent of the Baroque style in any language". Crashaw is frequently cited by Harold Segel when typifying

7029-447: The poem's opening line to use in their book titles. The most famous is Robert Penn Warren 's 1950 novel World Enough and Time: A Romantic Novel, about murder in early-19th-century Kentucky . With variations, it has also been used for books on the philosophy of physics ( World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute versus Relational Theories of Space and Time ), geopolitics ( World Enough and Time: Successful Strategies for Resource Management ),

7128-536: The poem's tribute turns. Twelve "Elegies upon the Author" accompanied the posthumous first collected edition of Donne's work, Poems by J.D. with elegies of the author’s death (1633), and were reprinted in subsequent editions over the course of the next two centuries. Though the poems were often cast in a suitably Metaphysical style, half were written by fellow clergymen, few of whom are remembered for their poetry. Among those who are, were Henry King and Jasper Mayne , who

7227-750: The poems have won the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Award, the Gregg Smith Choral Composition Contest, and other awards. Finch was invited by composer Deborah Drattell to write the libretto for the opera Marina , based on the life of poet Marina Tsvetaeva. it was produced by American Opera Projects in 2003, directed by Anne Bogart , and sung by Lauren Flanigan . Finch's 1993 book The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse uses prosody and postmodern and feminist theory to explore

7326-741: The poetic self. A subsequent essay on Sigourney was commissioned for Lydia Sigourney: Critical Essays and Cultural Views (2018), which also included Finch's elegiac poem for Sigourney. In the essay collection The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, Finch discusses her ideas about "poetess's poetics" in broader terms From 2006 to 2011, Finch served as editor of the Poets on Poetry Series at University of Michigan Press , where she solicited essay collections by poets including Meena Alexander , Reginald Shepherd , Martin Espada , Kazim Ali , and Marilyn Hacker . Finch's translation from French of

7425-474: The poetry of George Herbert as providing a flagrant example. During the course of the 1920s, T.S. Eliot did much to establish the importance of the Metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. By 1961 A. Alvarez was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with

7524-704: The poetry of Louise Labé was published by University of Chicago Press , honored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and represented in the Norton Anthology of World Literature . Spells includes translations from Anglo-Saxon , Classical Greek , and Russian. In the preface to Spells and in The Body of Poetry, Finch explains that the physical qualities of the original poem, including meter and rhyme , are central to her translation process. Finch began teaching as

7623-490: The poetry of Henry Vaughan, as in that of another of the late discoveries, Thomas Traherne , Neo-Platonic concepts played an important part and contributed to some striking poems dealing with the soul's remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm and its spiritual influence. Long before it was so-named, the Metaphysical poetic approach was an available model for others outside the interlinking networks of 17th century writers, especially young men who had yet to settle for

7722-479: The preamble to part three of Greg Bear 's Nebula award winning novel Moving Mars . In The Time Traveler's Wife , by Audrey Niffenegger , one of the main characters, Henry, recites the line "To world enough, and time," at several crucial points in the story. "Le char ailé du Temps" (Time's winged chariot) is the French translation (by Bernard Sigaud, 2013) of a short story by Nina Allan (2009), whose original title

7821-470: The preface to Spells: New and Selected Poems (2013), Finch writes, "Compiling this book has led me to appreciate how much I was inspired as a poet by coming of age during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Reading it has helped me understand the ways I struggled over the years to throw off the burden of misogyny on my spiritual, psychological, intellectual, political, and poetic identities. My themes are often female-centered . . . I am proud to define myself as

7920-411: The protagonist, pilot and poet Peter Carter: 'But at my back I always hear / Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity. Andy Marvell, What a marvel'. Primo Levi roughly quotes Marvell in his 1983 poem "The Mouse," which describes the artistic and existential pressures of the awareness that time is finite. He expresses annoyance at the sentiment to seize

8019-402: The publication of Spells, which includes 35 of the poems composed in the 1980s that she refers to as the "lost poems." In the preface to Spells , she describes these as "metrical and experimental poems [that]. . . did not find their audience until the avant-garde's rediscovery of formal poetic strategies just a few years ago." Reviewing Calendars , poet and Goddess scholar Patricia Monaghan

8118-533: The publisher, Haymarket Books , calls "the first major literary anthology about abortion." The Kickstarter launched two days before Alabama passed an abortion ban and reached its fundraising goal in the first week. Choice Words was published in April 2020. Claire Keyes notes in Scribner's American Writers , "A strong current in [Finch's] work is the decentering of the self, a theme which stems from her deep connection with

8217-569: The recent beheading of the king, it was wise to dissemble grief for him while mourning another under the obscure and closely wrought arguments typical of the Metaphysical style. The choice of style by the young Milton and the young Dryden can therefore be explained in part as contextual. Both went on to develop radically different ways of writing; neither could be counted as potentially Metaphysical poets. Nor could Alexander Pope , yet his early poetry evidences an interest in his Metaphysical forebears. Among his juvenilia appear imitations of Cowley. As

8316-540: The rest. An Age at least to every part, And the last Age should show your Heart. For Lady you deserve this State; Nor would I love at lower rate.     But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lye Deserts of vast Eternity. Thy Beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound My echoing Song: then Worms shall try That long preserv'd Virginity: And your quaint Honour turn to dust; And into ashes all my Lust. The Grave's

8415-770: The semiotics of meter in free verse poetry by Walt Whitman , Emily Dickinson , Stephen Crane , T.S. Eliot , Audre Lorde , and other poets. Building on the work of Roland Barthes and on John Hollander 's theory of "the metrical frame," Finch calls her theory of metrical meanings "the metrical code." The essay collection The Body of Poetry explores further topics in feminist poetics and poetic form including translation, "Metrical Diversity," and readings of poets including Sara Teasdale , Phillis Wheatley , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Marilyn Hacker , and John Peck . Finch's edited or coedited anthologies of poetry and poetics include A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women , An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets on

8514-495: The slightly older poet, Robert Southwell (who is included in Gardner's anthology as a precursor), had learned from the antithetical, conceited style of Italian poetry and knew Spanish as well. The European dimension of the Catholic poets Crashaw and Southwell has been commented on by others. In the opinion of one critic of the 1960s, defining the extent of the Baroque style in 17th-century English poetry "may even be said to have taken

8613-538: The subject in the English examples, while generally it is the colour of the skin with which Romance poets deal in much the same paradoxical style. Examples include Edward Herbert's "La Gialletta Gallante or The sun-burn'd exotic Beauty" and Marino's "La Bella Schiave" (The Beautiful Slave). Still more dramatically, Luis de Góngora 's En la fiesta del Santísimo Sacramento (At the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament) introduces

8712-536: The term 'Metaphysical poets' still retains some value. For one thing, Donne's poetry had considerable influence on subsequent poets, who emulated his style. And there are several instances in which 17th-century poets used the word 'metaphysical' in their work, meaning that Samuel Johnson's description has some foundation in the usage of the previous century. However, the term does isolate the English poets from those who shared similar stylistic traits in Europe and America. Since

8811-444: The thoughtful religious poems of the next generation with their exclamatory or conversational openings and their sense of the mind playing over the subject and examining it from all sides. Helen Gardner too had noted the dramatic quality of this poetry as a personal address of argument and persuasion, whether talking to a physical lover, to God, to Christ's mother Mary, or to a congregation of believers. A different approach to defining

8910-408: The time Milton composed these, the slightly younger John Cleveland was a fellow student at Christ's College, Cambridge , on whom the influence of the Metaphysical style was more lasting. In Milton's case, there is an understandable difference in the way he matched his style to his subjects. For the 'Nativity Ode' and commendatory poem on Shakespeare he deployed Baroque conceits, while his two poems on

9009-518: The time Pope wrote this, the vogue for the Metaphysical style was over and a new orthodoxy had taken its place, of which the rewriting of Donne's satires was one expression. Nevertheless, Johnson's dismissal of the 'school' was still in the future and at the start of the 18th century allusions to their work struck an answering chord in readers. Annie Finch Annie Ridley Crane Finch was born in New Rochelle, New York, on October 31, 1956. Her mother

9108-441: The trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables... The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires,

9207-564: The work of Ntozake Shange in a bookstore and "recognized in her a soul-mother, someone else for whom poetry was performative, sacred, curative, indispensable, physical." She immediately applied to the University of Houston, where Shange was teaching, and earned her M.A. in creative writing there in 1985 with a thesis in Verse Drama directed by Shange. Finch earned a Ph.D in English and American Literature from Stanford University in 1990, studying feminist theory with Adrienne Rich and pursuing

9306-800: The world some thousand years". Protestant Reformation Counter-Reformation Aristotelianism Scholasticism Patristics Second scholasticism of the School of Salamanca Lutheran scholasticism during Lutheran orthodoxy Ramism among the Reformed orthodoxy Metaphysical poets in the Church of England The Jesuits against Jansenism Labadists against the Jesuits Pietism against orthodox Lutherans Nadere Reformatie within Dutch Calvinism Richard Hooker against

9405-537: Was a close-knit group of courtiers, some of them with family or professional ties to Donne's circle, who initially borrowed Donne's manner to cultivate wit . Among them were Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his brother George, whose mother Magdalen was another recipient of verse letters by Donne. Eventually George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw, all of whom knew each other, took up the religious life and extended their formerly secular approach into this new area. A later generation of Metaphysical poets, writing during

9504-401: Was followed by a life of Wotton himself that prefaced the collection of Wotton's works in 1651. A life of George Herbert followed them in 1670. The links between Donne's elegists were thus of a different order from those between Donne and his circle of friends, often no more than professional acquaintanceship. And once the poetic style had been launched, its tone and approach remained available as

9603-556: Was one of the first critics to articulate the intersection of formal poetics and spirituality in Finch's work, writing, "Annie Finch is a traditionalist. Not in the way the word is commonly used . . . but in a strange experimental way. An oracle, an ecstatic maenad: that is the kind of traditional poet Annie Finch is." Finch's literary archive was purchased by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 2016. In

9702-562: Was poet and doll artist Margaret Rockwell Finch and her father, Henry Leroy Finch Jr. , was a pacifist leader and a scholar of philosophy whose works include three books on Ludwig Wittgenstein . Her great-aunt was the socialist organizer, politician, and writer Jessie Wallace Hughan . Finch began writing poetry as a child. She was educated in public schools, then for two years at Oakwood Friends School and one year at Simon's Rock Early College, where she studied filmmaking and art history. At Yale University she studied poetry, anthropology,

9801-405: Was soon to quit authorship for clerical orders. Bishop Richard Corbet 's poetry writing was also nearly over by now and he contributed only a humorous squib. Other churchmen included Henry Valentine (fl 1600–1650), Edward Hyde (1607–1659) and Richard Busby . Two poets, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland and Thomas Carew , who were joined in the 1635 edition by Sidney Godolphin , had links with

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