2013-05-08

Marilyn Hacker: Desesperanto

Marilyn Hacker is an acclaimed poet. She was also once married to my favorite living science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany.

I read one volume of her poetry many many years ago, but I can't really report on it. I just discovered the title of one of her books:

Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003)

See also the Poetry Foundation's bio of Marilyn Hackerb. 1942. Note:
Hacker put out a collection of new work, Desesperanto: Poems, 1999-2002, in 2003. The title, as several critics noted, is formed from a combination of the words "despair" and "Esperanto," the artificially created international language, and it reflects Hacker's view of the world as she straddles the Atlantic Ocean.
And from the review in Publishers Weekly:
Hacker's title fuses "despair" and Esperanto, and her book in some sense tries for both.
And here is the poem "Desesperanto."

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