Names: Poems

“Hacker is, to use a trite term, a major poet. More than that she is exciting and true.”—George Szirtes

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.