Abstract

Chiliastic Sapphic

This article presents information on two books, written by Marilyn Hacker. The books are "Selected Poems, 1965-1990," by and "Winter Numbers: Poems." Those tags have a basis in truth, but to read her books in that way is to miss the point: "Selected Poems," is the work of an artist who, in the interest of naturalness, conceals her art. The book includes work from five of Hacker's prior books, or all but "Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons." Marilyn Hacker's seventh book, "Winter Numbers," strikes to the author as her strongest to date. In "Chiliastic Sapphic," a new poem that links daily activity with world slaughter, the poet sits in her Paris apartment reading of tanks, aircraft carriers and suicide squadrons. A fascinating theme emerges in that poem and in the Winter Numbers at large the poet as a Jew in exile.