Poet, translator, librettist, playwright, theorist, and editor Annie Finch challenges the various orthodoxies of contemporary American poetry. In the general climate of realism and autobiographical confession, Finch's work engages mythic and magical traditions rather than the plain-speech, sharply defined anecdotal incident. In an age of free verse that associates "free" forms with feminism and a particular kind of American nationalism, Finch rejects such claims, finding her feminism and American identity in the traditional forms of an eclectic, multicultural poetry. In a milieu shaped by the boundaries between avant-garde, narrative, formal, and performance poetics, Finch brings together all of these traditions in her poetry, anthologies, and theoretical work. Finch calls herself "the first postmodern formal poet" because her poems combine virtuosity of poetic patterning with a contemporary understanding of language and identity. Uniting all of Finch's work is a conception of poetry as essentially incantatory, performative, speaking to the...