SOURCE: '"Nature Unconcern'd': Nature Poems and Humanistic Sensibilities," in Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography, The University of Georgia Press, 1992, pp. 78-88.

In the following excerpt, McGovern argues that Finch's nature poetry emphasizes the role of human agents in nature.

Of the more than 230 poems [Anne Finch] wrote … only about half a dozen are devoted primarily to descriptions of external nature, and these, with the exception of the two just named, are not among her better poems. Yet invariably these have been the poems included in standard anthologies. A few recent anthologies of women's literature have offered a more representative selection of her work, as have the small collections of her poetry that Denys Thompson and Katharine Rogers have edited. The popular image of Finch that still exists today, however, is that of a nature poet.

The reason for this continued misrepresentation of her work...