In print | Published October 2, 2008

On Monday night, Swarthmore College hosted a poetry reading by American poet, critic and reviewer Marilyn Hacker. Known to the literary world for a technique that both respects and fractures the constraints of form, Hacker has garnered praise for her socially oriented and introspective art. Recipient of the National Book Award, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from the Paris Review, the John Masefield Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, honored by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, Hacker has penned such esteemed works as “Winter Numbers” (1994. The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award), “Selected Poems, 1965-1990” (1994. The Poets’ Prize), “Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons” (1986), “Squares and Courtyards” (2000), “Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002” (2003) and “Essays on Departure: New and Selected Poems.”

Alternating passionate readings with witty remarks and humor, Hacker conveyed themes of sexuality, religion, politics and personal experience in a voice that borrowed the strange melody of Parisian streets. As Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson so eloquently explained in her introduction, Hacker’s work is a charming combination of “audacity and vulnerability, of sensuality and wit.” Anderson spoke of Hacker’s confessional poetry with great admiration: “Hacker is interested in form not to write neat, but to see how far she can push it, to explore its expressive resources. Marilyn Hacker’s art fully embodies how sticking to rules in one way allows you to break rules in another. There is a certain unpredictability within predictability: predictability enables the surprise.” Discussing Hacker’s rule-breaking life as a source of inspiration and her focus on controversial issues, Anderson added, “For Marilyn Hacker, breaking rules has a profound meaning. It is not used to shock, but as a topic submitted to the readers’ analysis—under which circumstances is it good to break rules and what is the difference in significance if the rules we break are those set by society or those set by ourselves? She writes about the details of her life to help people identify and create a feeling of solidarity, of a systemic problem; not our problem, but caused by the circumstances.”

Hacker’s poetry explores the importance of friendship, ordinary life as an active affirmation, the debt of social disconnection, sorrow for and of the 21st century, death beyond our control, and social solidarity. On the question of why Hacker chose ordinary life as one of her main sources of inspiration and recurrent themes, Anderson explained that “she chose snapshots of reality because it grounds us, it makes us enjoy the moment and see the beauty of everyday life.”

The poet considers her first source of inspiration to have been her relationship with language, the passion for reading that she has kept throughout her entire existence: “As a child, I loved songs and nursery rhymes … so I started to play and to try to create stanzas like the ones I remembered. I think my first literary attempts were in early adolescence … I read a lot, I enjoyed T. S. Eliot, Auden and Lowell.” When asked about her diverse literary activity, Hacker took a moment to reflect on her work as a translator. “Translation,” she explained, “is a good way to work with your ego somewhere else … There isn’t a more intimate way of reading a poem than by translating it.”

My last question to Marilyn Hacker was about her advice to young writers. She immediately answered: “Read. A lot. And, if possible, in other languages.”

“Her reading perked my interest in her poetry more than her actual written words did,” Rowen Jin ’12 said. “Hearing and watching her speak seemed to add another level to the poetry … I felt that she had a very deep connection to her poetry, that her poetry was written as much for herself as it was for others. I remember how she said that what she enjoyed most about poetry is the manipulation of words and form and that becomes really evident when you read her poetry (or hear her read it) aloud. The words seem to carry sounds, not just content, that reflect their meaning.”

Marilyn Hacker will return to the TriCollege area in spring, joining Mary Jo Salter, Tobias Wolff and Cornelius Eady in teaching a master class in poetry at Bryn Mawr.

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