A review by le_lobey
Separations by Marilyn Hacker

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

In the last section of this collection, also called Separations, Hacker presents a set of 18 sonnets. The sixth begins, 

I still balk at my preference for rhyme
which hounds me like an inarticulate
and homely lover whom I wished would wait
outside;

These poems really sang when they were strictly confined in forms and rhymes. Those aspects helped anchor me in the work and meaning, whereas I found myself unmoored in poems with more abstract subjects and which more freely moved between scenes and characters. The poems I found most accessible were ones about broken/breaking relationships.

My favorites were:

Somewhere in a turret
Sonnet
Geode
Villanelle: Late Summer
Gifts
Separations: XII

I also really liked Prism and Lens, from which:

And when the streetlamps flickered, I
leaned on the rail and spoke no more
and watched the morning open high
bright wings across the Brooklyn shore.