Hacker, Marilyn

Occasionally, a phrase brushes improbability (“My horse and my notebook think// what I am thinking/ through an orgy of cadence”), but these poems breathe with life; even in a collection this large, the reader stays involved. “On the road,/ cars rarify, whisk by trees that explode/ in redbud, apple blossom, presage fruit”: a poetic journey not to be missed.

While spanning 20 years of Hacker's poetry, this volume has an immediacy that makes it ageless. An important book from an essential poet.