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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.

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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.

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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A shadowy orange canyon with twisting rock formations

Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash

In the Shadow of Grenada

By Samira Negrouche

She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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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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Beneath a Pile of Rubble

By Djamal Amrani

Because death is stronger than hunger

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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From “The Night Inside”

By Djamal Amrani

The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

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

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In the Doorway of My Friend’s House

By Abdelkader al-Hosni

Come, I’ll show you two silences in the doorway.

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Hacker

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Dead

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

the foxes who recognized her by her smell didn’t light their matches

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Yet the storm announced festive disorder

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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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

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Her apron drawn on her skin

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

The mother sent us out in the street naked

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

if a storm broke she collapsed in soot

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Multilingual

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

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

A child would liquefy as soon as a snowflake touched the ground.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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As night became talkative

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Her kitchen utensils fled after the last guest deserted her

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Path of Light

I crawled to your lips across a bed of thorns

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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The Mothers

Our second home is built / in the avenue of death, say the mothers

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

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I Call You Tunisia

How the dream had lost its plumage / In the skies of your nest.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Crossing

By Habib Tengour

Noon is an extravagant abyss.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Crazy Zarifé

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Perused that evening by lamplight, that essay made the schoolmistress' hair stand on end.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

The Garden of the One

By Salah Stétié

The snail is necessary the bindweed is necessary

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Cadaver

By Joumana Haddad

I gaze at my corpse where it lies and I find myself beautiful.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

A Witness Disappears

By Marie Etienne

The more she spoke, the darker it became.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

I Introduce Myself to the World

I introduce myself to the world / mixed with my own shadows

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Tales of a Severed Head, I

By Rachida Madani

What city and what nightsince it’s night in the citywhen a woman and a train-station argue overthe same half of a man who is leaving.He is young, handsomehe is leaving for a piece of white bread.She…

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

From “Nettles”

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Statements of small importance / spreading like phosphorous fire on dry grass

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker