Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002 Book

In her poetry, Marilyn Hacker takes great risks with language; playing and bending words, sentences and meaning, using unusual words or constructions, pushing against constraints until the limits of the poem give in to her, without every seeming to lose control, all to wring the maximum possible sense and meaning from her lines. In her poems that utilize form, she shows how boundaries and limits free the artist, each line of a poem another facet of a finely-honed jewel, with nothing wasted, nothing extraneous.

There's an invigorating passion in Marilyn's work; a fierceness, a cleansing anger at stupidity and injustice. She dares to venture big ideas, and there is, in her poems, through determination and skillful execution, an ability to present a new view of people, incidents and circumstances which we may feel we are all-too-familiar. She also gives us thrilling small details that connect bigger themes; for instance in a poem like "Omelet," where whole worlds meet in a seven-inch iron skillet. You leave the poem both hungry--because of the deftness of the description--and sated by the larger meaning contained therein.

Marilyn Hacker's poetry shines new light in dark, familiar corners, allowing us to gain new insight and experience through her work.