Editing Marilyn Hacker

{{short description|American poet, translator and critic (born 1942)}}
'''Marilyn Hacker''' (born November 27, 1942) is an American [[poet]], translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the [[City College of New York]].

Her books of poetry include ''Presentation Piece'' (1974), which won the [[National Book Award]],<ref name=nba1975/> ''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]]. In 2009, she subsequently won the [[PEN Award for Poetry in Translation]] for ''King of a Hundred Horsemen'' by [[Marie Étienne]],<ref>[http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3536/prmID/1865 Marilyn Hacker: King of a Hundred Horsemen] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090629212740/http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3536/prmID/1865 |date=2009-06-29 }}</ref> which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the [[National Poetry Series]]. In 2010, she received the [[PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry]].<ref>[http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/books/entries/2010/09/23/pen_winners_announced.html PEN Winners Announced] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100926175937/http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/books/entries/2010/09/23/pen_winners_announced.html |date=2010-09-26 }}</ref> She was shortlisted for the 2013 [[PEN Award for Poetry in Translation]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pen.org/content/pen-award-poetry-translation |title=PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000) |publisher=PEN America |access-date=2013-08-15 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130806171007/http://www.pen.org/content/pen-award-poetry-translation |archive-date=2013-08-06 }}</ref> for her translation of ''Tales of a Severed Head'' by Rachida Madani.

== Early life and education ==
Hacker was born and raised in [[Bronx]], [[New York (state)|New York]], the only child of Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a management consultant and her mother a teacher.<ref name="gale">{{cite web |website=Encyclopedia.com |title=Hacker, Marilyn 1942- |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/hacker-marilyn-1942 |publisher=Gale |date=2009}}</ref> Hacker attended the [[Bronx High School of Science]], where she met her future husband [[Samuel R. Delany]], who would become a well-known [[science-fiction]] writer. She enrolled at [[New York University]] at the age of fifteen (B.A., 1964). Three years later, Hacker and Delany traveled from New York to [[Detroit|Detroit, Michigan]] 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."<ref name="delany">{{cite book |last = Delany
  | first = Samuel R.
  | author-link = Samuel R. Delany
  | title = The Motion of Light in Water
  | publisher = [[University of Minnesota Press]]
  | year = 2004
  | pages = 22
  | isbn = 0-9659037-5-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ge9cAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT35}}</ref> They settled in New York's [[East Village, Manhattan|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]],<ref name="finch">{{cite journal |last1=Finch |first1=Annie |author-link=Annie Finch |last2=Hacker |first2=Marilyn |title=Marilyn Hacker: An Interview on Form by Annie Finch |journal=The American Poetry Review |volume=25 |issue=3 |date=1996 |pages=23–27 |jstor=27782108}}</ref> and Delany has identified as a [[gay]] man since adolescence.<ref>Delany, Samuel R. "Coming/Out". In ''Shorter Views'' (Wesleyan University Press, 1999).</ref>

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hacker worked mostly in commercial editing.<ref name="pa">{{cite web |website=Poetry Archive |title=Marilyn Hacker |url=https://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/marilyn-hacker}}</ref> <!--She returned to NYU, edited the university literary magazine, publishing poems by [[Charles Simic]] and [[Grace Schulman]], and an early screenplay by Martin Scorsese.--><!--commenting that out because I can't verify it - if you can, cite a source and put it back--> She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in Romance Languages in 1964.<ref name="aap" />

== Career ==

Hacker's first publication was in [[Cornell University]]'s ''Epoch''.<ref name="campo">{{cite web |last1=Campo |first1=Rafael |author-link=Rafael Campo (poet) |website=Ploughshares |title=About Marilyn Hacker: A Profile |url=https://www.pshares.org/issues/spring-1996/about-marilyn-hacker-profile}}</ref> After moving to London in 1970, she found an audience through the pages of ''[[The London Magazine]]'' and ''[[Ambit (magazine)|Ambit]]''.<ref name="pa" /> She and her husband edited the magazine ''Quark: A Quarterly of Speculative Fiction'' (4 issues; 1970–71). <!--She also performed in a series of U.S. State Department-sponsored readings at British universities with the influential rock band [[Eggs Over Easy]].--> Early recognition came for her when [[Richard Howard]], then editor of the ''[[New American Review]]'', accepted three of Hacker's poems for publication.<ref name="pa" />

In 1974, when she was thirty-one, ''Presentation Piece'' was published by The Viking Press. The book was a [[Lamont Poetry Selection]] of the Academy of American Poets and won the annual [[National Book Award for Poetry]].<ref name=nba1975/> ''Winter Numbers'', which details the loss of many of her friends to [[AIDS]] and her own struggle with [[breast cancer]], garnered a [[Lambda Literary Award]] and ''[[The Nation]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s [[Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize]].<ref name="campo" />  Her ''Selected Poems 1965-1990'' received the 1996 [[Poets' Prize]], and ''Squares and Courtyards'' won the 2001 [[Audre Lorde Award]].<ref name="gale" /> She received an Award in Literature from the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] in 2004.<ref name="pa" />

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]] in [[sonnet]]s. She is also recognized as a master of "French forms" such as the [[Rondeau (forme fixe)|rondeau]] and [[villanelle]].<ref name="exalt">{{cite book |last1=Finch |first1=Annie |author-link=Annie Finch |last2=Varnes |first2=Kathrine |title=An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art |publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]] |date=2002 |isbn=9780472067251 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/exaltationofform00finc/page/288 288]–289 |url=https://archive.org/details/exaltationofform00finc|url-access=registration }}</ref>

In 1990 she became the first full-time editor of the [[Kenyon Review]], a position she held until 1994. She was noted for "broaden[ing] the quarterly's scope to include more minority and marginalized viewpoints."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kenyonreview.org/about/history/ |title=A Brief History of the Kenyon Review |publisher=The Kenyon Review |access-date=2013-08-15}}</ref> 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."<ref>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, {{doi|10.2307/20455214}}.</ref>

Hacker served as a Chancellor of the [[Academy of American Poets]] from 2008 to 2014.<ref name="aap">{{cite web |website=Academy of American Poets |title=Marilyn Hacker |url=http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/marilyn-hacker}}</ref>

Hacker lives in New York and Paris and has retired from teaching at the [[City College of New York]] and the [[CUNY Graduate Center]].<ref name="gale" />

Though not a character, a poem of Hacker's is reprinted in ''[[Heavenly Breakfast]],'' Delany's memoir of a [[Greenwich Village]] commune in 1967; in Delany's autobiography, ''[[The Motion of Light in Water]]'';<ref name="delany" /> 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]]. In 2013, she was inducted into the [[New York Writers Hall of Fame]]. In 2014, she published a collaboration with a Palestinian-American poet, [[Deema Shehabi]], written in the style of a Japanese [[renga]], a form of alternating call and answer. The book, ''Diaspo/renga: a collaboration in alternating renga'' explores the emotional journey of living in exile.<ref name="Diaspo/Renga">{{cite web|title=Diaspo/Renga|url=http://hollandparkpress.co.uk/book_detail.php?book_id=40|website=Holland Park Press|access-date=19 April 2015|location=London}}</ref>

In a review of the 2015 collection ''A Stranger's Mirror'', [[Carol Muske-Dukes]] comments that Hacker has not received her "due as one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Muske-Dukes |first=Carol |date=2015-03-06 |title=How Tom Sleigh, Marilyn Hacker, Deborah Landau, Cecilia Woloch bear witness |url=https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-poetry-roundup-20150308-story.html |access-date=2024-01-16 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref> 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."<ref name="larb">{{cite news |last1=Juster |first1=A. M. |title=Marilyn Hacker: Rebel Traditionalist |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/marilyn-hacker-rebel-traditionalist/ |website=Los Angeles Review of Books |access-date=8 August 2019 |date=1 August 2019}}</ref>

==Bibliography==

===Poetry===
* ''Presentation Piece'' (1974) {{ISBN|0-670-57399-X}} —winner of the National Book Award<ref name=nba1975>
[http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1975.html "National Book Awards – 1975"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110909065656/http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1975.html |date=2011-09-09 }}. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-04-07. <br/>(With acceptance speech by Hacker and essay by Megan Snyder-Camp from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>
* ''Separations'' (1976) {{ISBN|0-394-40070-4}}
* ''Taking Notice'' (1980) {{ISBN|0-394-51223-5}}
* ''Assumptions'' (1985) {{ISBN|0-394-72826-2}}
* ''Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons'' (1986) {{ISBN|978-0-393-31225-6}}
* ''Going Back to the River'' (1990) {{ISBN|0-394-58271-3}}
* ''The Hang-Glider's Daughter: New and Selected Poems'' (1991) {{ISBN|0-906500-36-2}}
* ''Selected Poems: 1965 - 1990'' (1994) {{ISBN|978-0-393-31349-9}}
* ''Winter Numbers: Poems'' (1995) {{ISBN|978-0-393-31373-4}}
* ''Squares and Courtyards'' (2000) {{ISBN|978-0-393-32095-4}}
* ''Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002'' (2003) {{ISBN|978-0-393-32630-7}}
* ''First Cities: Collected Early Poems 1960-1979'' (2003) {{ISBN|978-0-393-32432-7}}
* ''Essays on Departure: New and Selected Poems'' (2006) {{ISBN|1-903039-78-9}}
* ''Names: Poems'' (2009) {{ISBN|978-0-393-33967-3}}
* ''A Stranger's Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994 - 2014'' (2015) {{ISBN|978-0-393-24464-9}}
* ''Blazons: New and Selected Poems, 2000 - 2018'' (2019), Carcanet Press, {{ISBN|978-1-784-10715-4}}
* ''Calligraphies: Poems'' (2023), W. W. Norton & Company, {{ISBN|9781324036463}}

===Translations===
* {{cite book |title=King of a Hundred Horsemen: Poems |last=Étienne |first=Marie |author-link=Marie Étienne |others=Translator Marilyn Hacker |publisher=[[Farrar Straus Giroux]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-374-53192-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/kingofhundredhor0000etie}}
* [[Jean-Paul de Dadelsen|de Dadelsen, Jean-Paul]] (2020). ''That Light, All at Once'', Translator, Marilyn Hacker, Yale University Press.
* [[Guy Goffette|Goffette, Guy]] (2007). ''Charlestown Blues: Selected Poems, A Bilingual Edition'', Translator, Marilyn Hacker, The University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|9780226300740}}
* [[Claire Malroux|Malroux, Claire]] (2005). ''Birds and Bison,'' Translator, Marilyn Hacker, Syracuse University Press. {{ISBN|1-931357-25-0}}
* Malroux, Claire (2020). ''Daybreak'' (2020), Translator, Marilyn Hacker, New York Review Books. ISBN 9781681375021
* [[Vénus Khoury-Ghata|Khoury-Ghata, Vénus]] (2003). ''She Says'', Translator, Marilyn Hacker, Graywolf Press. {{ISBN|978-1-55597-383-4}}
* Khoury-Ghata, Vénus (2022). ''The Water People'', Translator, Marilyn Hacker, The Poetry Translation Centre, U.K.
* Madani, Rachida (2012), ''[https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300176285/tales-severed-head Tales of a Severed Head]''. Trans. Marilyn Hacker. New Haven: Yale UP.
* [[Samira Negrouche|Negrouche, Samira]] (2020). ''The Olive Trees' Jazz and Other Poems''. Translator Marilyn Hacker. Pleiades Press.
===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]], 2010)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/92 Marilyn Hacker at www.poets.org]
*[http://www.pshares.org/authors/author-detail.cfm?intAuthorID=628 About Marilyn Hacker] at [[Ploughshares]]
*{{isfdb name|id=10642|name=Marilyn Hacker}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20090629212740/http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3536/prmID/1865 Marilyn Hacker's 'Translator's Preface' to ''King of a Hundred Horseman'']
*[[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.hacker|Marilyn Hacker Papers]]. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hacker, Marilyn}}
[[Category:Formalist poets]]
[[Category:National Book Award winners]]
[[Category:American speculative fiction translators]]
[[Category:American speculative fiction critics]]
[[Category:American science fiction editors]]
[[Category:Jewish American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Jewish American poets]]
[[Category:American lesbian writers]]
[[Category:Lesbian Jews]]
[[Category:Lesbian poets]]
[[Category:American women poets]]
[[Category:Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry winners]]
[[Category:Writers from the Bronx]]
[[Category:The Bronx High School of Science alumni]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:21st-century American poets]]
[[Category:American LGBTQ poets]]
[[Category:LGBTQ people from New York (state)]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American translators]]
[[Category:21st-century American translators]]
[[Category:American women non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:People from the East Village, Manhattan]]
[[Category:Writers from Manhattan]]
[[Category:American speculative fiction editors]]
[[Category:American women editors]]
[[Category:21st-century American Jews]]