Names
Poems
13 May 2011
Territory Rights — Worldwide.
Description
“[Hacker] powerfully brings her formal mastery and her political sensibility together.”—American Poet
In Names, Marilyn Hacker juxtaposes glimpses of contemporary lives with dialogues undertaken in signal poetic voices. Using her signature wit, passion, and mastery of received and invented forms, she convinces us to believe in a world made possible by language—prescient, playful, polyglot, and often breathtaking.
from “Ghazal: The Beloved”:
Lines that grapple doubt, written because of the beloved:
when grief subsides, what survives the loss of the beloved?
Your every declaration is suspect.
That was, at least, the departing gloss of the beloved.
Were you merely a servant of the state
or (now you give the coin a toss) of the beloved?
How pure you were, resistant in an orchard.
Peace with justice: the cause of the beloved.
from “Ghazal: The Beloved”:
Lines that grapple doubt, written because of the beloved:
when grief subsides, what survives the loss of the beloved?
Your every declaration is suspect.
That was, at least, the departing gloss of the beloved.
Were you merely a servant of the state
or (now you give the coin a toss) of the beloved?
How pure you were, resistant in an orchard.
Peace with justice: the cause of the beloved.
Reviews
"Hacker will be remembered for her instinct to balance what’s fraught with what’s reassuring. Hence her nimble, graceful yoking of war, exile, and the persistence of human hatred with our desire to see sunrise and sunset, to tear a bite of bread from the loaf." — Marilyn Krysl, Women’s Review of Books
Also By: Marilyn Hacker 
Calligraphies: Poems
Paperback, 2023
A formally brilliant and powerful volume from “one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today” (Carol Muske-Dukes,Los Angeles Times).
Calligraphies: Poems
Hardback, 2023
A formally brilliant and powerful volume from “one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today” (Carol Muske-Dukes,Los Angeles Times).
A Stranger's Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994 8211 2014
Paperback, 2016
A selection of poems that addresses the quotidian and the global, from one of our most essential poets.
A Stranger's Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994–2014
Hardback, 2015
Longlisted for the National Book Award.
A Stranger's Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994–2014
E Book, 2014
A selection of poems that addresses the quotidian and the global, from one of our most essential poets.