- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton (Oct 1 1995)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393313492
- ISBN-13: 978-0393313499
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 268 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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.
From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hacker is True to Form,
By
This review is from: Selected Poems 1965 To 1990 (Paperback)
For anyone who believes in the true "craft" of poetry, Marilyn Hacker is a breath of fresh air. Far to the opposite of the spectrum of purely narrative poetry, Hacker's work -- throughout her career -- has demonstrated the true skill a poet can achieve through meter and rhyme.Selected Poems 1965-1990 spans five of Hacker's previous collections, including Presentation Piece, Hacker's first collection, which was widely-acclaimed and got her some well-deserved notice in the literary world. Hacker's poems are extraordinarily structured, typically following the sestina or villanelle form, usually rhymed, sometimes tossing in a Pantoum or two. But Hacker's poems should not be read focusing on the form; rhymes should not distract you from the actual subject matter of the poem. Hacker's works are best read with the natural pauses and inflections that narrative lines receive. Don't let the form distract you. In this aspect, Hacker has truly demonstrated the enormous skill of putting together fantastic contemporary poems within the confines of a rigid classic structure. The subject matter Hacker covers in her poems is noteworthy. Hacker writes terribly personal poems and is the first poet I've read who can accurately yet compassionately address the heart-wrenching task of caring for someone (for Hacker, it's her mother) with diabetes. Hacker's deeply emotional poems center around the important relationships in her life: her mother, her (ex)husband, her daughter, her lovers. Hacker writes about her male and female lovers with equal passion, but her devotion to her daughter is what really shines through in a great many of her poems. As is the problem with rhymed or formal poetry, the true skill comes in making the form invisible. It is difficult to write lines where the rhymed words don't seem forced into place, or where you have to scramble the natural sentence structure to make it "fit." Some of these tricks are apparent in the selections from Hacker's earlier books, but those tricks are not readily apparent in her later works. Hacker's earlier works also have a tendency to reach into non sequitur to fit the rhymes and form. Overall, I admire this collection for its showcasing of Hacker's passion and skill. It has a great deal of depth and emotion, all while exhibiting the potential of the poetic form in the hands of a fantastic poet.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly Deserving of its National Book Award,
By
This review is from: Selected Poems 1965 To 1990 (Hardcover)
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly Deserving of its National Book Award,
By Krista - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems 1965 To 1990 (Hardcover)
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.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Want to Be Marilyn Hacker When I Grow Up!,
By Anna Evans - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems 1965 To 1990 (Hardcover)
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.
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