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Contributor

Marilyn Hacker

Portrait of Marilyn Hacker

Contributor

Marilyn Hacker

United States

Marilyn Hacker is the author of fourteen books of poems, including A Stranger’s Mirror (Norton, 2015) and Blazons (Carcanet, 2019), two collaborative books, Diaspo/Renga, written with Deema K. Shehabi (Holland Park Press, 2014), and A Different Distance, written with Karthika Naïr (Milkweed Editions, 2021), and an essay collection, Unauthorized Voices (Michigan, 2010). She has translated eighteen books of French and Francophone poets. Her new collection, Calligraphies, will be published by W.W. Norton early in 2023. She lives in Paris.

Articles by Marilyn Hacker

sun setting behind a field of grass

Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash

Anna

By Samira Negrouche

your mother like Mecca is a promised land—you must go there only once

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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“I Write in French to Tell the French I Am Not French”: Algerian Francophone Poetry

By Marilyn Hacker

Algerian Francophone poetry was largely outside, and in contrast to, the post-World War II movement in French poetry of disengagement from political causes.

From “The Night Inside”

By Djamal Amrani

The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

Beneath a Pile of Rubble

By Djamal Amrani

Because death is stronger than hunger

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

Minus One

By Samira Negrouche

I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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A shadowy orange canyon with twisting rock formations

Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash

In the Shadow of Grenada

By Samira Negrouche

In this poem, Samira Negrouche leads the reader across a landscape of grieving deserts and volcanic desire.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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Celebration of the Absent One

By Habib Tengour

The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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The Tartar from the Kremlin

By Habib Tengour

This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

from “Clairvoyant in the City of the Blind”

I hope and despair at the same moment

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Stories from “The Hedgehog”

By Zakariya Tamer

I asked my best friend, the black stone wall, about the latest news in our house.

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

In the Doorway of My Friend’s House

By Abdelkader al-Hosni

I stopped in the doorway of my friend’s house And my palm was glued to the doorbell But my finger trembled, too weak to arouse A desire to ring in its wires I wavered. The road to his house had…

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

Dead

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

the mother looked like the linden tree in the square like the wood of the table on which she wrote our faces like the log that didn’t sweat or complain about the smoke dead she began to avoid us…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

As night became talkative

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

we were lent a window on a fragment of the world We we re the house and the road that led to the house The mother moved the door each time a train went by and at each procession toward the…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Her apron drawn on her skin

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

the mother sent us out in the street naked Walnut husks served us for ink Fences we’d jumped were the pages we leafed through Euphoria in the evening when she multiplied her arms two to embrace…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

It was a November of bitter rain and snow blackened by use

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

we filed the dead leaves by size to ease the task of the forest that was absent for reasons known only to itselfThe parents had left with the doorWe mistook puddles for creekspebbles…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

God, the mother claimed, is behind every tree in the forest

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

his right shoulder lower than his leftheavy with rocky snowfalls from such enduranceIt’s his motionless breath that fissures our walls in the night when one winter hands power over to…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

Helicopter seeds on a maple tree

Photo by bales on Unsplash

When did their language mingle with ours

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

The female branches made off with the laundry on our lines

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

How to find the mother when her face disappeared behind the hills

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

How to find the mother when her face disappeared behind the hills leaving us a body without contours two packets of cold for the armpits white grass for the pubis Gone off with her friend the fire…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

I Call You Tunisia

II heard your voice at daybreakLike a scarlet dawnGiving birth in darknessThe years’ turning backOn themselvesRocking the ebb and flowOn the shore of a seaAt once full and emptyI caught your lightLost…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Crazy Zarifé

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

It was because of a star that appeared between the Great Bear and the Little Bear that the goats in a village in northern Lebanon ate the French essays of the eighth-grade primary class.Engrossed in watching…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Tales of a Severed Head, I

By Rachida Madani

What city and what night since it's night in the city when a woman and a train-station argue over the same half of a man who is leaving. He is young, handsome he is leaving for a piece of white bread.…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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