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A Stranger's Mirror

New and Selected Poems 1994-2014
3.67 goodreads logo

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( 48 ratings, 11 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
A Stranger's Mirror gathers two decades of Marilyn Hacker's award-winning poetry, including pieces from four previous volumes and twenty-five new poems. The collection explores diverse settings, from solitary bedrooms to refugee camps, and features multiple voices that engage with French and Francophone poets. Hacker’s urban landscapes brim with cafés, bookshops, demonstrations, and intimate moments, while also reaching global contexts like the Turkish/Syrian border. The poems traverse various poetic forms, creating a rich, ongoing conversation with poetic traditions and contemporaries.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This collection is ideal for readers who appreciate formal poetry, explorations of cultural and political themes, and those seeking a deeply engaged and diverse poetic voice that connects personal and global experiences.

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A selection of poems that addresses the quotidian and the global, from one of our most essential poets.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Drawing on two decades worth of award-winning poetry, Marilyn Hacker's generous selections in A Stranger's Mirror include work from four previous volumes along with twenty-five new poems, ranging in locale from a solitary bedroom to a refugee camp.

In a multiplicity of voices, Hacker engages with translations of French and Francophone poets. Her poems belong to an urban world of cafés, bookshops, bridges, traffic, demonstrations, conversations, and solitudes. From there, Hacker reaches out to other sites and personas: a refugee camp on the Turkish/Syrian border; contrapuntal monologues of a Palestinian and an Israeli poet; intimate and international exchanges abbreviated on Skype – perhaps with gunfire in the background.

These poems course through sonnets and ghazals, through sapphics and syllabics, through every historic-organic pattern, from renga to rubaïyat to Hayden Carruth's "paragraph." Each is also an implicit conversation with the poets who came before, or who are writing as we read.

A Stranger's Mirror is not meant only for poets. These poems belong to anyone who has sought in language an expression and extension of his or her engagement with the world – far off or up close as the morning's first cup of tea.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Praised by critics for transcending material and innovating formal verse, Marilyn Hacker is celebrated as an extraordinary and major poet. A Stranger's Mirror is hailed as an essential collection for fans and an excellent introduction for new readers, with Publishers Weekly calling it a unified testament to two decades of her work.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780393353310

Publisher: WW Norton & Co

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 20 September 2016

Country: United States

Imprint: WW Norton & Co

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 20.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 211.0mm

Weight: 239g

Pages: 304

About the Author

Marilyn Hacker is the author of nineteen volumes of poems. Her honors include the National Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She lives in Paris.

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