First Cities: Collected Early Poems 1960-1979

by Marilyn Hacker

The first three books of one of our best poets, including her National Book Award-winning volume Presentation Piece , plus Separations and Taking Notice . The wonder of Marilyn Hacker's poems...is that she insists upon the rawness of experience and the metamorphosis of form with equal fervor and makes them both speak with the same voice. The result, again and again, is a poem of intense intimacy, beauty and authority."―W. S. Merwin

Genres: Poetry

322 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

Marilyn 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.

Reviews

[Christopher Sparks · Rating 3 out of 5]

First Cities has been a companion for almost a year now. I began reading it in the early mornings, it lived on dinning table, then mantle for awhile. I would take it hiking to forget to read from it. Most of all I would read from it when I wanted most to be moving.

First Cities is the life of a poet. From early brilliance to more subtle motions, Hacker always finds unyielding rawness and delivers it with care... though now that I reflect on it, it may be the author's making of life as much as it is poetry I mean. Hacker brings her poetry into her life. She responds to letters, and invitations with poetry. She has conversations with poetry. It compelled me to make more of reading this collection.

There were a few pieces that stood out for me:

The Navigators,
The Terrible Children,
The Song of Liadan,
Catherine,
Return,
Lines Declining a Transatlantic Dinner Invitation,
Iva's Pantoum,
Iva's Birthday Poem,
July 19, 1979,
Canzone.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

it’s fine. hacker ADORES form; lots of sonnets, which provide excellent models. many smoldering poems about desire. the first clutch of poems in the first book were incredibly syntactically dense, and the rest adopt an easy conversationalism that sometimes reads well, sometimes undercuts. not one of my favorites but also not the worst collection I’ve ever read.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say I liked a good third of these poems. So many seemed to be so personal, like trying to decipher an inside joke, with meaning that wasn't really easily transferred outside of the relationship she was referencing. Some seem to include embodiment of pain in actual beings, particularly the poems early on. Didn't care for the ones describing mundane actions,i never find that type very meaningful or interesting. Some of the best were the shorter repeating ones, like this:


Villanelle by Marilyn Hacker

Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate

us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.

[Corinne Blackmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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