Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons [Paperback]

Marilyn Hacker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 1995

This critically acclaimed sonnet sequence is the passionately intense story of a love affair between two women, from the electricity of their first acquaintance to the experience of their parting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Inspired by passion for one of her poetry studentsRachel of the "leonine hair"Hacker poured out this extraordinary, long sonnet sequence, with an occasional villanelle thrown in, over the course of their yearlong, mostly long-distance love affair. Since the lovers are often apart, the book is as much a personal diary cum colorful travelogue (during this time Hacker commutes with her young daughter between Manhattan's Upper West Side, Paris and Venice) as it is an account of lust, ecstasy, yearning, jealousy and betrayal. These sonnets are graphic, colloquial and immediate; Hacker's command of the straitening, fixed form, which often seems archaic and empty when used by other poets, is a stunning achievement.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Don't let the abstract title mislead you. This lengthy sequence of formal, rhymed sonnets laced with villanelles chronicles an obsessive lesbian love affair with a direct, colloquial, fleshly passion ("We'll do just fine when we can jam together/the necessary parts"). Against the chic scenery of Paris, Manhattan, and Provincetown, Hacker recounts states of separation and sexual longing focused so tightly on the beloved that the whirl of cafes, bars, and shopping sprees could not seem more superfluous. At times the series slows to self-indulgencecatalogs of lunches eaten, clothes wornbut Hacker's impressive technical skills, combined with the sensitivity of her subject and her straightforward diction, prevent the book from becoming the flat diary a lesser poet might have written.Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393312259
• ISBN-13: 978-0393312256
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marilyn Hacker is the author of twelve books of poems, including Names (Norton, 2009) Essays on Departure (Carcanet Press, UK, 2006)and Desesperanto (Norton, 2003). Her ten volumes of translations from the French include Emmanuel Moses' He and I (Oberlin College Press, 2009), Marie Etienne's King of a Hundred Horsemen (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2008) which received the 2009 American PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Vénus Khoury-Ghata's Nettles (The Graywolf Press, 2008). She lives in New York and Paris andteaches at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the City College of New York. She is a past recipient of the Lenore Marshall Award, the Poets' Prize, the National Book Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life-Changing, Sexy, Alive..., February 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (Paperback)

A pregnant pause between word three and four of one of these sonnets changed my life. Hacker writes an accessible, witty, beautiful, tender, sexy masterpiece (a novel, really) which has become, since its pub date, a folk rite-of-passage for many readers (even non-poetry lovers), a pole-raising standard for other poets, and the source for many phrases worth remembering: from "age is not the muddle of the matter" to the rhyming of "fit of pique" with "geste heroique." This is a page-turning classic -- erudite, lyrical, and peopled by women one would want to know. A smart person's tour de force!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stepping carefully through old relations, May 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Cairo, Egypt) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (Paperback)

Marilyn Hacker through her poetry describes her life with her lover, both in New York and Paris. She, being older, talks about insecurities and the torture of being away from the one you love. From the first meeting to the phone call goodbye, Marilyn describes the appropriate lust over another person. This poetry is amazing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece of Desire and Sex, Love and Loss, December 25, 2008

By 

Suzanne (Middleburg, VA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (Paperback)

Sophistocated and exact, Marilyn Hacker is a poet's poet. She is a formalist who still believs in the power of sonnets, a writer of astounding intellect and superb taste who, like Wallace Stevens, gives you the feeling she's intensely alive even in contemplation. This book, with the poems all set in New York, is a tour de force of modern poetry: a novel in sonnets, each sonnet connecting to the one before it and to the one that follows. It recounts the stormy love affair between the poet and her wayward muse, a much younger woman. The language is gorgeous. The story is romantic, gritty and quotidian, all in the right places. The details fix you in place and time: upscale New York life, late 20th century. These poems take you through the full range of emotion, but mostly they're very, very sexy. The subject may be lesbian love but no lover can fail to identify with the joy and ache and longing--and yes, even with the sex. A perfect Valentine's Day gift. A total masterpiece.