Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

Marilyn Hacker's volume, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, is a sumptuous sonnet cycle that some have called a verse-novel. Rather than a novel, though, the volume is more a memoir. The collection does tell a story - an intense, emotional story of a year-long lesbian love affair. The title of the work is a fitting pun: while Hacker's relationship cycles the seasons, it is, nevertheless, a May-December romance. Some seventeen years separate the lovers. From the beginning, Hacker and her lover, Rachel, sizzle, and Hacker writes bluntly, and explicitly, of the thrill of attraction, the fervor of love at first blush, the passion, and possibility, of fantasy. And, the satisfaction of satisfaction. Lust soon turns to love, and Hacker finds herself in an unaccustomed position - that of needing someone. While in the heat of the relationship, the age disparity does not seem an issue; in the end, though, it becomes clear that maturity matters and that Hacker has much more invested in the relationship than does Rachel. Like a voyeur, Hacker's reader peeks, not only into Hacker's bedroom, but also into Hacker's life. It is the quotidian (one of Hacker's favorite words) moments that are most poignant. Here, Hacker writes of home, of her daughter - Iva, of her travels. Undergirding all, however, is her relationship with Rachel. When the two are separated, and this happens often with Hacker frequently in Italy or France, the verse resonates with longing for Rachel. The distance between the two is palpable in these lines, and Hacker achieves this by peppering her verse with allusions to foreign locales and by writing phrases in Italian or French. The reader, like Hacker, eagerly awaits the reunion of the two. Then, the poetry comes to a heartrending, staggering end. It is over, just like the love affair. And the reader undoubtedly feels the same punch to the gut that Hacker does, especially when she helplessly wonders, "will one year bracket us from start to finish?" All of this - the plain yet elegant language, the interconnected sonnets, the various villanelles, the heartbreaking symmetry - creates a compelling love story.

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.

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!

One of my favorite books of poetry ever. No matter the gender of my lover, this is the book I read when things are going great...and when they fall apart. Sexy, deep, and gorgeous language. I'm always grateful she's around.

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.