Amazon.com
Marilyn Hacker's dark, complex poetic vision has a strange, often formal, beauty to it. Yet, when she writes in Living in the Moment: "I try to be a woman I could love./ I am probably wrong, asking/ you to stay . . ." one feels a very elemental tension between hope and fear, self-loathing and the need for love. It's a tangled inner life that Hacker is opening up for our inspection, and these are beautiful and brave poems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I Want to Be Marilyn Hacker When I Grow Up!
I suspect she can rattle off blank verse in iambic pentameter without thinking about it. She can be as earthy as Sharon Olds ("Mother II"), self-deprecating as Philip Larkin ("Riposte") or amusingly Byronic ("Ballade of Ladies Lost & Found.") I appreciate her older poetry, but my admiration increases as I read the newer work, particularly the poems from the most recent collection in this book, Going Back to the River; I would mention "April Interval," "Nights of 1964-1966: the Old Reliable," "Elevens" and `Against Silence" as being particularly striking. She is a diva at my favorite forms: the sonnet and the sestina, and now, thanks to her I have found a new one, the canzone.

Truly Deserving of its National Book Award
Hacker is a master of the sonnet, sestina, and villanelle.I'm always amazed when I arrive at the end of one of her poems and discover that elegant and natural words are arranged in one of these structured ways. Her words and images pull you into the poems and into Hacker's mind. Elegant.Beautiful. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Life-Changing, Sexy, Alive...
A pregnant pause between word three and four of one of these sonnets changed my life.Hacker writes an accessible, witty, beautiful, tender, sexy masterpiece (a novel, really) which has become, since its pub date, afolk rite-of-passage for many readers (even non-poetry lovers), apole-raising standard for other poets, and the source for many phrasesworth remembering: from "age is not the muddle of the matter" tothe rhyming of "fit of pique" with "geste heroique."This is a page-turning classic -- erudite, lyrical, and peopled by womenone would want to know.A smart person's tour de force!

Beginning to end of a love affair in sonnet form?!!
One of my favorite books of poetry ever.No matter the gender of my lover, this is the book I read when things are going great...and when they fall apart.Sexy, deep, and gorgeous language.I'm always grateful she'saround.

Stepping carefully through old relations
Marilyn Hacker through her poetry describes her life with her lover, both in New York and Paris.She, being older, talks about insecurities and the torture of being away from the one you love.From the first meeting to the phone call goodbye, Marilyn describes the appropriate lust over another person.This poetry is amazing. ... Read more

Book Description
One of our strongest poets of conscience confronts the dangerous new century with intelligence, urbanity, and elegiac humor.

Marilyn Hacker's voice is unique in its intelligence, urbanity, its deployment of an elegiac humor, its weaving of literary sources into the fabric and vocabulary of ordinary life, its archaeology of memory. Desesperanto refines the themes of loss, exile, and return that have consistently informed her work. The title itself is a wordplay combining the Spanish word esperanto, signifying "hope," and the French desespoir, meaning "to lose heart." Des-esperanto, then, is a universal language of despair&#151despair of the possibility of a universal language. As always in Hacker's poetry, prosodic measure is a catalyst for profound feeling and accurate thought, and she employs it with a wit and brio that at once stem from and counteract despair. Guillaume Apollinaire, June Jordan, and Joseph Roth are among this book's tutelary spirits, to whom the poet pays homage as she confronts a new, dangerous century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Read the Book
I'm glad there are some blank pages in the back of this book because it gives me a place to jot notes. What's happened around this book since it's publication-silence-(i.e. so few reviews) is part and partial/symptomatic of what the poet decries in her first poem-a prologue to the rest of the book-as the "abandoned dissident discourse" brought on by "leaden words like `Homeland.'"

Are reviewers too lazy, too busy, too afraid to take on the challenges a book like this puts forth? This book asks that we do our homework or that we be as well read, as engaged in the real world of current and past politics and policies as the author is. The book calls for each reader to write his/her own reader's guide (much as Hacker's earlier poem "Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found" demanded: "Make your own footnotes; it will do you good.")

Hacker's aim, in part, is to make us aware of the people, the public people, who populate her text, people such as June Jordon, Muriel Rukeyser, Audre Lorde, Neruda, Venus Khoury-Ghata, Hayden Carruth, all of them politically engaged poets who considered themselves charged, as poets, with the duty to speak out against the ills of the world around them. As Hacker does.

Poetry is for an elite few! Poof! This poetry is available to anyone who takes the time to read it-to shut off CNN, "Friends" and FOX News and delight in the sounds that cascade and roll over us and give us what the best poetry has forever: delight to the ear because of its musical/verbal genius, its use of assonance, consonance, rhyme of every kind, alliteration. The poems deliver the kind of pleasure successfully completing a jigsaw puzzle does and at the same time hit home with their portrayal of human experiences that most of us have lived through: the loss of a loved one to cancer, the experience of being jilted by a lover, the fear of death, the fear of life as we know it today in the "homeland."

Read it and think. Read it and look up the proper names. Read it and weep. Read it and carry on.

Study your French
Marilyn Hacker's collection of poems, Desesperanto, is a blend of American subjects and French flair.The poetry collection is a look into the woman herself.Her thoughts, concerns in the world, and her sorrow of the friends that she has lost in the recent years.The poems here are very thought provoking and insightful. They are designed to challenge the reader to go a step beyond the passive reading most are accustomed to.Hacker's use of the French language is designed to add melody and rhythm to the poems, while forcing the reader to run and find a French-to-English dictionary.I'm not sure if this is a book I would choose for beginning poetry classes. It is a work that I would recommend for advance poetry fans and perhaps a women's literature course.
My personal favorite out of the collection is "English 182." The poem explores the emotions of an English professor (Hacker) attempting to gain some sense of her students.The speaker singles out a young African-American student that never participates in class discussions and eventually plagiarizes a paper.The speaker responds by reaching out to the student, by attempting to teach on African-American female poets.
The poem reaches out to me as a Black student because I have often felt isolated in all White classes, learning about figures that I cannot relate to.Despite the fact that the speaker does teach about Black women, it can be very difficult to speak up in a class where you are the only minority.It is my experience that many professors often feel that Black Students should feel obligated to speak out in class.They feel that if there is little representation of the Black race in the class, those few students should feel compelled to speak up for the entire population.Rather than feeling obligated to speak, my of these students retreat into their own shell when faced with the task of being the only Black in class.Hacker does a great job exploring the issues of failure with the poem.I would love to see her tap into theme of insufficient minority representation in the university setting.

Got Time?
If you don't have a lot of time on your hands, or have difficulty getting through poetry, then this book is not for you. This is definitely an advanced read, it's not just a curl up by the fire type book, it's an intense work of art. Her vast knowledge of two different worlds (Paris and America) have been brought together here in this book. She does a great job of relating extraordinary things, to your ordinary person. Hacker is lyrical, and have a magnificent way with words. There are many poems in this book that stand out. She is a very literal writer, it is very evident that her whole heart is put into her work. When you read this, you have a sense of her, what she is about. I enjoyed this book, it is a great way to get your mind jumping, and thinking, and working. If that's what you are looking for, then this is it. If you are looking for an easy read, then stick with nursery rhymes.

Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002
Ashley Braswell

If you don't have a lot of time on your hands, or have difficulty getting through poetry, then this book is not for you. This is definitely an advanced read, it's not just a curl up by the fire type book, it's an intense work of art. Her vast knowledge of two different worlds (Paris and America) have been brought together here in this book. She does a great job of relating extraordinary things, to your ordinary person. Hacker is lyrical, and have a magnificent way with words. There are many poems in this book that stand out. She is a very literal writer, it is very evident that her whole heart is put into her work. When you read this, you have a sense of her, what she is about. I enjoyed this book, it is a great way to get your mind jumping, and thinking, and working. If that's what you are looking for, then this is it. If you are looking for an easy read, then stick with nursery rhymes.

Hacker's review
After reading Hacker's book Desesperanto I felt like I knew her with out knowing her. She writes beautifully about her life, friends, where she grew up, her get-away place(Paris), and her strong opinions about politics. Through imagery and word usage she gives the reader the setting, the time, and the emotional state she was in. You can hear the train in New York, see the cafes in Paris, and smell the Lapsang Souchong. The use of French gives you a better sense of what she was trying to capture in this collection and a good explanation of her life in New York and in Paris. ... Read more

Book Description
A ninth volume of poems by one of our most important poets, winner of the National Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Poets' Prize, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Squares and Courtyards moves with the rhythm of the writer's life, from Paris to New York, between the poles of youth and age, sickness and health, life and death. Sequences celebrate the community of friends, the courage of those living with HIV and cancer. This book is at once elegiac and a song of praise to language's power to remind us that, to take action, it is necessary to take notice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sappho in Khaki
Embracing wholly contemporary matter in the idiomatic classicism perfected by her predecessor, W.H. Auden, Marily Hacker is so limber in her scansion, so poised in her shapings, that her four horsemen (cancer, AIDS, America as the lone superpower, the holocaust) trot along the pavement like drays pulling the farmer's wagon through Paris to les Halles.

She may be the first American in decades to take possession of Paris (with the possible exception of Paul Auster), not the postcard Paris of literary nostalgia, but the parks & apartments filled with the excluded, with addicts, with victims, with friends...the greys, the odors, the river all merge with the urban vision from her native New York city.

She confronts and subdues unwieldy themes which tempt others to propaganda or to shrillness. Ms. Hacker, instead, is laconic and empathetic, faintly ironic, in lines like "Death has a tendency to overdo/and life to border on the bathetic." She pots Jessie Helms very nicely in leaving him to anchor the end of a poem which is as traditional as any enemy of the NEA could care to read: "'Our' foreign policy chair's Jessie Helms..." Her delicate touch with epigram leaves the reader delighted: "the hegemonic televangelist..."

The ambiguity of being other in the opening poem of the collection, "The Boy"; her hymn to her sister-sufferers of breast cancer in "Invocation"; the delicate sapphics of "Broceliande"; the force and wholeness of "Days of 1994: Alexandrians (for Edmund White)" alone should earn her (though it would be hard to imagine her accepting it) the poet laureateship.

Best to conclude with the stanza from "Days of 1994" which clinches her reputation:

Four months (I say) I'll see her, see him again

(I dream my life, I wake to contingencies.)

Now I walk home along the river,

into the wind, as the clouds break open. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
Contributors to this issue include: Elizabeth Alexander, Julia Alvarez, Rane Arroyo, Alison Brackenbury, Melissa Cannon, Alfred Corn, Brian Komei Dempster, Tory Dent, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Martín Espada, U. A. Fanthorpe, Julie Fay, Anne Finger, Catherine Gammon, Diana García, Mary Gordon, Arthur Gregor, Judith Hall, Marie-Geneviève Havel, John R. Keene, Yusef Komunyakaa, Maxine Kumin, Adrian C. Louis, Khaled Mattawa, Stephen McLeod, Constance Merritt, Alicia Ostriker, Carl Phillips, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Hilda Raz, Boyer Rickel, Aleida Rodríguez, Carol Rumens, Grace Schulman, Maureen Seaton, Reginald Shepherd, Edmund White ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
The first three books of one of our best poets, including her National Book Award-winning volume Presentation Piece, plus Separations and Taking Notice. "The wonder of Marilyn Hacker's poems...is that she insists upon the rawness of experience and the metamorphosis of form with equal fervor and makes them both speak with the same voice. The result, again and again, is a poem of intense intimacy, beauty and authority."—W. S. Merwin ... Read more

Product Description
This is the Annual Literary Awards ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Antioch Review, published by Antioch Review, Inc. on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 6045 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Education of the Poet: A Colloquy with Richard Howard and Marilyn Hacker.
Publication: The Antioch Review (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: Antioch Review, Inc.
Volume: 58Issue: 3Page: 261

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Thomson Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Poetry for Students."Download Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to bone up for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by the Gale Group--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: The Gale Group--and "Poetry for Students." ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Marilyn Hacker, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 5106 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

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This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 1, 2004. The length of the article is 659 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Marilyn Hacker. Desesperanto: Poems, 1999-2002.(Book Review)
Author: Leslie Schenk
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2004
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 78Issue: 3-4Page: 99(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
It can be hard to share your pain with others when the words for such raw emotions seem impossible to express. When you're deep into the blues, and your world feels dark, find a quiet place, open the pages of this beautiful book, and let the healing power of poetry pour into your soul. What you will discover in this wonderful collection are 100 poems that will take your blues away. They have been chosen with care and thought from the abundant resources of American and international writing. Favorite poets of the past such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Wallace Stevens stand alongside the newer voices of Robert Bly, Louise Glick, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda, Galway Kinnell, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Marilyn Hacker, Dorianne Laux, James Wright, and others. Though they all speak with different voices, these poets find their own, miraculous words to expose pain and through this exposure, heal it. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Marilyn Hacker's Winter Numbers is a meditation on death, a collection of painful poems in the wake of losing loved ones to AIDS and cancer. The numbers referred to here are the metronomic beats of passing time, the mile markers on life's journey, the months remaining in a doctor's grim prognosis. The only solace is in connection, as Hacker writes in Year's End: "Underneath the numbers, how lives are braided." Highly recommended for the mortal. ... Read more