November's Featured PoetMarilyn Hacker (1942-) was born in NYC and attended the Bronx High School of Science, NY University, and the Art Student’s League. She has taught, sold antiquarian books, and worked as an editor of books and periodicals. She has several collections of poetry and has won numerous awards. She likes to write in form. The rondeau which follows has three stanzas. In the second and third, the closing line is an echo of the first stanza’s opening line. See what an interesting thing she does with it. She was 30-something when she wrote it:
Rondeau After a Transatlantic Telephone Call
Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor's double‑bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,
smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good
imagining around your voice, you, late‑
awake there. (It isn't midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, "Goodnight,
love. It was good."
Further Reading: Selected poems, 1965‑1990 / Marilyn Hacker,1994; Squares and courtyards / Marilyn Hacker, 2000; Winter numbers : poems / Marilyn Hacker, 1994.
Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson.
