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Blazons: New and Selected Poems, 2000-2018
A Poetry Book Society Spring 2019 Special Commendation Chosen as a TLS Book of the Year 2019 This generous volume collects new work by one of the most elegant and pertinent poets working in English. Hacker writes pantoums, sonnets, canzones, ghazals and tanka; she is witty, angry, traditional, experimental. Her poetry is in open dialogue with its sources, which include W. H. Auden, Hayden Carruth, Adrienne Rich, and latterly a host of contemporary French, Francophone and Arab poets. Hacker's engagement with Arabic, almost a second language in Paris, where she lives, has led to her exchanges and engagement with Arabic-speaking immigrants and refugees in France, whose own stories and memories deepen and broaden her already polyglot oeuvre. Her poetry has been celebrated for its fusion of precise form and demotic language; with this, her latest volume, Hacker ranges further, answering Whitman's call for 'an internationality of languages'.
- GenresPoetry21st Century
181 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 28, 2019
About the author
Marilyn Hacker
112 books77 followersMarilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator, critic, and professor of English.
Her books of poetry include Presentation Piece (1974), which won the National Book Award, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Going Back to the River (1990). In 2009, Hacker won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne, which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the National Poetry Series. In 2010, she received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She was shortlisted for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation of Tales of A Severed Head by Rachida Madani.
Her books of poetry include Presentation Piece (1974), which won the National Book Award, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Going Back to the River (1990). In 2009, Hacker won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne, which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the National Poetry Series. In 2010, she received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She was shortlisted for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation of Tales of A Severed Head by Rachida Madani.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 27, 2020
Pantoum
For Fadwa Suleiman
Said the old woman who barely spoke the language:
Freedom is a dream, and we don’t know whose.
Said the insurgent who was now an exile:
When I began to write the story I started bleeding.
Freedom is a dream, and we don’t know whose –
that man I last saw speaking in front of the clock tower
when I began to write the story? I started bleeding
five years after I knew I’d have no more children.
That man I last saw speaking in front of the clock tower
turned an anonymous corner and disappeared.
Five years after I knew I’d have no more children
my oldest son was called up for the army,
turned an anonymous corner and disappeared.
My nephew, my best friend, my second sister
whose oldest son was called up for the army,
are looking for work now in other countries.
Her nephew, his best friend, his younger sister,
a doctor, an actress, an engineer,
are looking for work now in other countries
stumbling, disillusioned, in a new language.
A doctor, an actress, an engineer
wrestle with the rudiments of grammar
disillusioned, stumbling in a new language,
hating their luck, and knowing they are lucky.
Wrestling with the rudiments of grammar,
the old woman, who barely speaks the language,
hated her luck. I know that I am lucky
said the insurgent who is now an exile.
For Fadwa Suleiman
Said the old woman who barely spoke the language:
Freedom is a dream, and we don’t know whose.
Said the insurgent who was now an exile:
When I began to write the story I started bleeding.
Freedom is a dream, and we don’t know whose –
that man I last saw speaking in front of the clock tower
when I began to write the story? I started bleeding
five years after I knew I’d have no more children.
That man I last saw speaking in front of the clock tower
turned an anonymous corner and disappeared.
Five years after I knew I’d have no more children
my oldest son was called up for the army,
turned an anonymous corner and disappeared.
My nephew, my best friend, my second sister
whose oldest son was called up for the army,
are looking for work now in other countries.
Her nephew, his best friend, his younger sister,
a doctor, an actress, an engineer,
are looking for work now in other countries
stumbling, disillusioned, in a new language.
A doctor, an actress, an engineer
wrestle with the rudiments of grammar
disillusioned, stumbling in a new language,
hating their luck, and knowing they are lucky.
Wrestling with the rudiments of grammar,
the old woman, who barely speaks the language,
hated her luck. I know that I am lucky
said the insurgent who is now an exile.
June 25, 2019
Wonderful poetry. Master of form, beautiful little observations, with an recurrent theme of exile and loss, contemplative. I enjoyed the translations included in the book and the notable Arabic & Persian & Kurdish influence on Hacker's poems
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews