Marilyn Hacker Quotes

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.

The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

I don't read novels, but my semiotics study influenced everything about the way I read and edit and write.

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.

For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.

When I discovered the lyric poem, that advanced not by narrative steps but by blocks and layers of imagery, I said, 'Gee, I probably could do that. So let me try that.'

What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feelings.

Vladimir Nabokov on 'Bleak House' or Henry James on 'The House of the Seven Gables' prove that reading can be an exciting subject in itself, full of passionate encounters, contradictory judgments, striking discoveries, and unexpected reversals.

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.