Early Modern Center
Department of English, UCSB

• Biography

• List of Poems

• Alphabetized List of Poems

• Annotated Poems

• Essays

• Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

The seed for this project was implanted in my head in the Fall of 2003 when I took an upper division English course with Professor Cook. We touched on several Early Modern female poets including Anne Finch. The professor mentioned that much of Finch’s poetry was not widely available and she would offer an honors project if someone wanted to put Finch poems online. With my daunting biochemistry schedule, I did not get a chance to start this project until one year later.

I first started with researching existing websites that featured Anne Finch’s poetry. I found two websites that were either too confusing to navigate or did not contain many poems. These sites showed me that navigability and design layout are extremely important for a reader. After speaking with the EMC graduate student, Tassie Gnaidy, I had some ideas on how to set up my own website. Instructional Computing offered some classes on website building which I took in order to learn how to build a website. I learned HTML code and how to use the program Dreamweaver.

The next step in the project was deciding what to put on the website. My original intention was to put up poems that are not easily available in print. This corresponded to the 1903 Reynolds edition. After seeing the look on Tassie’s face when she saw this book in my hands, I knew that putting these poems on would benefit other Finch fans as well. I spent countless hours typing up poems, a daunting task as it turned out. I was only able to put 33 poems on the website thus far, but my goal is to have all the poems in the Reynolds edition online by the end of next year.

Three of the poems that I was able to type up caught my attention. These poems are “The Change,” “The Bargain,” and “Glass.” I annotated the poems in order to achieve a greater understanding of each. “The Change” initially caught my attention because it mentioned the phrase “Persian votary.” I did some research, looked up several words and Professor Cook pointed out that Finch was following in the footsteps of the Edmund Spencer and the Mutability Cantos. I found this poem to be depressing yet encouraging. How the river, sun, and building are inevitably going to decay was somehow uplifted by the very last lines that reveal Heaven is the only place which will be shielded from change and that we should look forward to this space. “The Bargain” is another favorite poem as it explores the dichotomy between alcohol and love. As a college student, I get to see first hand this strange effect alcohol has on love, so this poem was fitting for the college atmosphere. Finally, “Glass” was one of the hardest poems to decipher. Although it is short and not many old meanings of words are used, it comes off as a riddle. After being stumped for sometime, I asked a friend what he thought the poem meant and slowly the riddle was unraveled. Finch was commenting on the invention and uses of glass. This poem also deals with issues of alcohol, but is altogether a clever work. With the help of the English Oxford Dictionary and commentaries from my professor and friends, I was able to summarize the content of each poem in three essays.

Once the poems were typed up, it was time to actually build the pages that would come together and make the website. It took about fifteen hours to make the pages with the Dreamweaver program. I ran into a couple problems trying to make all the pages but with the help of Tassie, these problems were solved.

To sum up the project, it was truly a challenge. From typing up old English to actually mounting the poems onto the website, each step of the process was demanding. Yet, I enjoyed the process of designing an assignment that would be challenging to me. The most difficult tasks were the technical aspects, such as typing up the poems and mounting them online. However, the fact that this website would offer an unlimited amount of people access to otherwise hard to find poems kept me motivated to complete the project. I am proud to be able to make a website that will be useful to the academic community.