Selected Poems 1965-1990

by Marilyn Hacker

Overview

Here is a rich collection of work from five books by one of America's most controversial poets. Marilyn Hacker's poems have been praised for their technical virtuosity, forthright feminism, political acuity, and unabashed eroticism.

Included are selections from Hacker's first book, Presentation Piece (1974), the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and a National Book Award Winner; Separations (1976); Taking Notice (1980), which was claimed as an integral part of the burgeoning feminist and lesbian canon; Assumptions (1985), which explored the conundrums of gender, race, and identity in contemporary life; and Going Back to the River(1990), which received a Lambda Literary Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393247381
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/08/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	244 KB

About the Author

Marilyn Hacker is the author of nineteen volumes of poems. Her honors include the National Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She lives in Paris.

Editorial Reviews

Tracing Hacker's (Assumptions) poetic development here will make an intriguing journey for both new and familiar readers of this leader of the feminist/lesbian poetry movement. Hacker's signature style-passionate, technically deft-is spotlighted in early poems such as ``Elegy,'' paying tribute to the agonized ``sandpaper/ velvet'' throat of Janis Joplin. The poet has noted that ``subjects choose us, not otherwise'': by the 1980s, her subjects were avowedly feminist, ranging from political ideology in ``Coda'' to eros in ``La Fontaine de Vauclause.'' Other poems disclose her ``taking notice'' of her estranged relations with her diabetic mother, and of her daughter Ira, ``born hero'' and ``found... flawed.'' Recent poems find Hacker's stance forthrightly gay (``unsaintly ordinary female queers''), yet her style has become more muted, especially in written reveries about the chaotic 1960s. This collection deserves honors for its great heart and its embrace of the female condition. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"In Hacker we have a poet who has gone to the center while broadening the periphery," said LJ's reviewer when these two works were published jointly. (LJ 9/15/94)

Library Journal

"Marilyn Hacker is an essential American poet. In these poems elements of tone and theater find a balance which is witty and powerful all at once; which seems impossible but happens anyway. This is a poet of dazzling opposites. Her formal variety exists with a strong-willed vernacular; her lyric wryness with a determined narrative. These poems tell her story. They also honor the story of poetry in our time with their strength and purpose and their clear, unswerving gaze."

Eavan Boland

"Marilyn Hacker's poetry passes loss through wit, and makes it sing."

Diane Middlebrook