Marilyn Hacker's voice is unique in its intelligence, urbanity, its deployment of an elegiac humor, its weaving of literary sources into the fabric and vocabulary of ordinary life, its archaeology of memory. Desesperanto refines the themes of loss, exile, and return that have consistently informed her work. The title itself is a wordplay combining the Spanish word esperanto, signifying "hope," and the French desespoir, meaning "to lose heart." Des-esperanto, then, is a universal language of despair —despair of the possibility of a universal language. As always in Hacker's poetry, prosodic measure is a catalyst for profound feeling and accurate thought, and she employs it with a wit and brio that at once stem from and counteract despair. Guillaume Apollinaire, June Jordan, and Joseph Roth are among this book's tutelary spirits, to whom the poet pays homage as she confronts a new, dangerous century. 02 02 One of our strongest poets of conscience confronts the dangerous new century with intelligence, urbanity, and elegiac humor.
- ISBN10 0393054187
- ISBN13 9780393054187
- Publish Date 17 May 2003
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 15 August 2012
- Publish Country US
- Imprint WW Norton & Co
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 128
- Language English