Deseperanto – Poems - Hardcover

Hacker, Marilyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393054187 ISBN 13: 9780393054187

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003

Synopsis

Marilyn Hacker's voice is unique in its intelligence, urbanity, its deployment of an elegiac humor, its weaving of literary sources into the fabric and vocabulary of ordinary life, its archaeology of memory. Desesperanto refines the themes of loss, exile, and return that have consistently informed her work. The title itself is a wordplay combining the Spanish word esperanto, signifying "hope," and the French desespoir, meaning "to lose heart." Des-esperanto, then, is a universal language of despair ―despair of the possibility of a universal language. As always in Hacker's poetry, prosodic measure is a catalyst for profound feeling and accurate thought, and she employs it with a wit and brio that at once stem from and counteract despair. Guillaume Apollinaire, June Jordan, and Joseph Roth are among this book's tutelary spirits, to whom the poet pays homage as she confronts a new, dangerous century. 02 02 One of our strongest poets of conscience confronts the dangerous new century with intelligence, urbanity, and elegiac humor.

About this title

Review

"The poet remembers war, illness, heartbreak, and intoxication and is enraptured, instructed, and transformed by the variegated beauty of life, the mysterious presence of mind, and the balm of language."

About the Author

Marilyn Hacker is the recipient of the National Book Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Her collection Winter Numbers received a Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Paris, France.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0393054187
• ISBN 13: 9780393054187
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128