Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942) is an acclaimed American poet and translator known for her formal innovation and her exploration of themes such as identity, gender, and sexuality. Throughout her career, Hacker has earned a reputation for her mastery of a wide range of poetic forms, including the sonnet, and for her ability to seamlessly blend the personal with the political.

Key Points about Marilyn Hacker:

  1. Early Life and Education: Hacker was born in New York City and grew up there. She attended Brandeis University and later studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Her academic background and early interest in languages, literature, and poetry deeply influenced her later work.

  2. Poetic Style: Marilyn Hacker is known for her formal innovation in poetry, particularly in her use of traditional forms such as the sonnet, but with a contemporary and often feminist sensibility. Her poetry often explores complex emotions, relationships, and the intersection of personal experience with larger social and political themes.

  3. Themes: Hacker’s work addresses themes of love, identity, loss, and political struggle. Her poetry frequently engages with gender and sexuality, reflecting her own experiences as a lesbian. She has also explored feminist perspectives, the nature of intimacy, and the complexities of human connections in her work.

  4. Notable Works:

    • "Presentation Piece" (1974): Hacker's first poetry collection, which was well received for its formal mastery and exploration of personal and social themes.

    • "Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons" (1995): This collection further solidified her reputation as a significant voice in contemporary American poetry, with poems that balance personal reflection with larger cultural commentary.

    • "A Stranger's Mirror" (2004): A collection of poems that engage with global and cultural politics while maintaining a deep focus on individual human experience.

    • "Desire" (2019): Hacker's most recent collection, which deals with themes of longing, memory, and identity.

  5. Translator and or: In addition to her work as a poet, Marilyn Hacker is also an accomplished translator. She is particularly known for translating French poetry into English. Her translations of works by poets such as Véronique Tadjo, Jules Supervielle, and Marie Etienne have garnered critical acclaim. Hacker’s skillful translation work demonstrates her deep understanding of language and her ability to bring foreign poetry into the English-speaking world while maintaining its original emotional depth.

  6. Awards and Recognition: Hacker has received numerous prestigious awards throughout her career, including the National Book Award for Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Her works have appeared in major literary journals, and she has been a key figure in contemporary American poetry.

  7. Influence and Legacy: Marilyn Hacker is widely regarded as a major figure in American poetry. Her innovative use of form, her exploration of identity and social issues, and her groundbreaking contributions as a translator have earned her respect from both her contemporaries and new generations of poets.

Hacker’s poetry continues to resonate for its emotional depth, intellectual rigor, and commitment to representing the complexities of human life and social structures. Through her work, Marilyn Hacker has established herself as a vital voice in contemporary poetry and a trailblazer in the art of poetic translation.

Articles by the author

Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.

Marilyn Hacker

You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.

Marilyn Hacker

I started to send my work to journals when I was 26, which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years.

Marilyn Hacker

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.

Marilyn Hacker

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

Marilyn Hacker

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

Marilyn Hacker

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

Marilyn Hacker

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

Marilyn Hacker

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

Marilyn Hacker

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

Marilyn Hacker