Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hackeris an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 November 1942
CountryUnited States of America
musical sound syntax
The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.
alive scar staying-alive
With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.
children men animal
Women love a sick child or a healthy animal; A man who is both itches them like an incubus.
years numbers phones
I lived in the studio apartment that I bought for four years before I bought it in 1989, so I was already in it. I began living there in 1985, so I've had the same address and phone number since then.
thinking cities literature
I think there is something about coming to a city to work that puts you in touch with it in a different way.
thinking two way
Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.
spiritual exercise literary-genre
Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.
cities paris community
Paris is a wonderful city. I can't say I belong to an especially anglophone community.
thinking helping reader
I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.
thinking two french-woman
I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.
teaching writing everyday
I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.
contradiction
Poetry dovetails contradictions.
teaching writing mean
I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.
book able email
I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.