Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942) is an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

, translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

. Her books of poetry include ''Presentation Piece'' (1974), which won the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

, ''Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons'' (1986), and ''Going Back to the River'' (1990). In 2003, Hacker won the

Willis Barnstone Translation Prize The Willis Barnstone Translation Prize is an annual award given to an exceptional translation of a poem from any language into English. The prize was inaugurated in 2002 by the University of Evansville, and has been presented annually since 2003. T ...

. In 2009, she subsequently won the

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is given by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to honor a poetry translation published in the preceding year. The award should not be confused with the PEN Translation Prize. The award is one of many ...

for ''King of a Hundred Horsemen'' by Marie Étienne, which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the

National Poetry Series The National Poetry Series is an American literary awards program. Every year since 1979, the National Poetry Series has sponsored the publication of five books of poetry. Manuscripts are solicited through an annual open competition, judged and cho ...

. In 2010, she received the

PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry The PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry is given biennially to an American poet whose distinguished and growing body of work to date represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature. The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by ...

. She was shortlisted for the 2013

for her translation of ''Tales of a Severed Head'' by Rachida Madani.

Early life and education

Hacker was born and raised in

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, the only child of Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a management consultant and her mother a teacher. Hacker attended the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Sp ...

, where she met her future husband Samuel R. Delany, who would become a well-known

science-fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

writer. She enrolled at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

at the age of fifteen (B.A., 1964). Three years later, Hacker and Delany traveled from New York to

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

and were married. In ''The Motion of Light in Water'', Delany said they married in Detroit because of age-of-consent laws and because he was African-American and she was Caucasian: "there were only two states in the union where we could legally wed. The closest one was Michigan." They settled in New York's East Village. Their daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany, was born in 1974. Hacker and Delany, after being separated for many years, were divorced in 1980, but remain friends. Hacker identifies as

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

, and Delany has identified as a

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

man since adolescence. In the '60s and '70s, Hacker worked mostly in commercial editing. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in Romance Languages in 1964.

Career

Hacker's first publication was in

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

's ''Epoch''. After moving to London in 1970, she found an audience through the pages of ''

The London Magazine ''The London Magazine'' is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732. All six have focused on the arts, literature and miscellaneous topics. 1732–1785 ''The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly I ...

'' and '' Ambit''. She and her husband edited the magazine ''Quark: A Quarterly of Speculative Fiction'' (4 issues; 1970–71). Early recognition came for her when

Richard Howard Richard Joseph Howard (October 13, 1929 – March 31, 2022; adopted as Richard Joseph Orwitz) was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a graduate of Columbia University, w ...

, then editor of the ''

New American Review ''American Review'' was a literary journal published from 1967 to 1977 under editor Ted Solotaroff. It was initially called ''New American Review'', published and distributed as a paperback book by the New American Library, and while it continued ...

'', accepted three of Hacker's poems for publication. In 1974, when she was thirty-one, ''Presentation Piece'' was published by The Viking Press. The book was a

Lamont Poetry Selection The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...

of the Academy of American Poets and won the annual National Book Award for Poetry. ''Winter Numbers'', which details the loss of many of her friends to

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

and her own struggle with

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or ...

, garnered a

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

and ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...

'''s

Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...

. Her ''Selected Poems 1965-1990'' received the 1996 Poets' Prize, and ''Squares and Courtyards'' won the 2001

Audre Lorde Award The Audre Lorde Award is an annual literary award, presented by Publishing Triangle to honour works of lesbian poetry. First presented in 2001, the award was named in memory of American poet Audre Lorde Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lo ...

. She received an Award in Literature from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

in 2004. Hacker often employs strict poetic forms in her poetry: for example, in ''Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons'', which is a

verse novel A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there will usually be a large cast, multiple ...

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

s. She is also recognized as a master of "French forms" such as the rondeau and

villanelle A villanelle, also known as villanesque,Kastner 1903 p. 279 is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet rep ...

. In 1990 she became the first full-time editor of the

Kenyon Review ''The Kenyon Review'' is a literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, US, home of Kenyon College. ''The Review'' was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959. ' ...

, a position she held until 1994. She was noted for "broaden ngthe quarterly's scope to include more minority and marginalized viewpoints." In a 2005 essay discussing the theme of food and drink in Hacker's poetry, scholar Mary Biggs describes her work as frequently referring to three "interlinked, paradoxical themes: (1) love and sex; (2) travel, exile, diaspora-counterpoised with family, community, home; and (3) the eternal and, for her, eternally positive association of women with nurturance and with homemaking in the broadest sense."Biggs, Mary. “Bread and Brandy: Food and Drink in the Poetry of Marilyn Hacker.” ''Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature'', vol. 24, no. 1, 2005, pp. 129–50, https://doi.org/10.2307/20455214. Hacker served as a Chancellor of the

Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...

from 2008 to 2014. Hacker lives in New York and Paris and has retired from teaching at the

and the

CUNY Graduate Center The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the C ...

. Though not a character, a poem of Hacker's is reprinted in '' Heavenly Breakfast,'' Delany's memoir of a

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

commune in 1967; in Delany's autobiography, '' The Motion of Light in Water''; and her prose and incidents about her appear in his journals, ''The Journals of Samuel R. Delany: In Search of Silence'', Volume 1, 1957–1969, edited by Kenneth R. James (Wesleyan University Press, 2017). Hacker was a judge for the 2012

Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine The Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine was founded in 2009 by Donald Singer and Michael Hulse. The founders "wished to draw together national and international perspectives on three major historical and contemporary themes uniting the disc ...

. In 2013, she was inducted into the

New York Writers Hall of Fame The New York State Writers Hall of Fame or NYS Writers Hall of Fame is a project established in 2010 by the Empire State Center for the Book, which is the New York State affiliate of the U.S. Library of Congress's Center for the Book, and the Em ...

. In 2014, she published a collaboration with a Palestinian-American poet,

Deema Shehabi Deema Shehabi (born 1970) is a Kuwaiti-born poet and writer. She has widely published in journals and wrote her first book of poetry in 2011. It was followed by an anthology which she co-edited in 2012 in response to the bombing of Baghdad's hist ...

, written in the style of a Japanese

renga ''Renga'' (, ''linked verse'') is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry in which alternating stanzas, or ''ku (''句), of 5-7-5 and 7-7 mora (sound units, not to be confused with syllables) per line are linked in succession by multiple poets. ...

, a form of alternating call and answer. The book, ''Diaspo/renga: a collaboration in alternating renga'' explores the emotional journey of living in exile. In a laudatory review of Hacker's 2019 collection ''Blazons'', A. M. Juster states that "there is no poet writing in English with a better claim for the Nobel Prize in Literature than Marilyn Hacker."

Bibliography

Poetry

* ''Presentation Piece'' (1974) —winner of the National Book Award"National Book Awards – 1975"
.

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

. Retrieved 2012-04-07.
(With acceptance speech by Hacker and essay by Megan Snyder-Camp from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) * ''Separations'' (1976) * ''Taking Notice'' (1980) * ''Assumptions'' 1985 * ''Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons'' (1986) * ''Going Back to the River'' (1990) * ''The Hang-Glider's Daughter: New and Selected Poems'' (1991) * ''Selected Poems: 1965 - 1990'' (1994) * ''Winter Numbers: Poems'' (1995) * ''Squares and Courtyards'' (2000) * ''Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002'' (2003) * ''First Cities: Collected Early Poems 1960-1979'' (2003) * ''Essays on Departure: New and Selected Poems'' (2006) * ''Names: Poems'' (2009) * ''A Stranger's Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994 - 2014'' (2015) * ''Blazons: New and Selected Poems, 2000 - 2018'' (2019), Carcanet Press,

Translations

* Claire Malroux, ''Birds and Bison'' (2005) * * Rachida Madani,
Tales of a Severed Head
'. Trans. Marilyn Hacker. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. * Samira Negrouche. The Olive Trees' Jazz and Other Poems.Translator Marilyn Hacker. Pleiades Press, 2020

Anthologies

* (edited with Samuel R. Delany) '' Quark/1'' (1970, science fiction) * (edited with Samuel R. Delany) '' Quark/2'' (1971, science fiction) * (edited with Samuel R. Delany) '' Quark/3'' (1971, science fiction) * (edited with Samuel R. Delany) '' Quark/4'' (1971, science fiction)

Literary criticism

* Hacker, Marilyn. ''Unauthorized Voices'' (Poets on Poetry Series,

University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including ...

, 2010)

References

External links

Marilyn Hacker at www.poets.orgAbout Marilyn Hacker
at

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Boston. ...

*
Marilyn Hacker's 'Translator's Preface' to ''King of a Hundred Horseman''
* Marilyn Hacker Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hacker, Marilyn Formalist poets National Book Award winners American speculative fiction editors American speculative fiction translators American speculative fiction critics Science fiction editors Jewish American writers American lesbian writers LGBT Jews American women poets Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry winners People from the Bronx The Bronx High School of Science alumni 1942 births Living people 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets American LGBT poets LGBT people from New York (state) 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 20th-century translators 21st-century translators American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers People from the East Village, Manhattan Women speculative fiction editors 21st-century American Jews