Poetry review – TRANSITIONS: Norbert Hirschhorn responds to Marilyn Hacker’s new collection by reflecting on the sonnet form that she handles so very well
Transitions. New and Selected Sonnets
Marilyn Hacker
Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, 2026
ISBN-13: 978-1-57131-572-4
237 pages $20
Marilyn Hacker has written formal poetry for decades, from the sedate sonnet to the crashingly wild canzone. [Disclosure: Marilyn has been my friend and tutor for nearly twenty years.] She is equally adept at translations, French in particular but also with co-authors from Arabic. Transitions: New and Selected continues her poetic journey. Here is a new sonnet:
My back’s a misery. My mind aligns
and doesn’t note the fortress on the hill-
side, beige, foliage-traced, sheltered a vill-
age once, then sheltered nuns, now, dwarf-oaks, pines,
and plane trees: Castelas. Once, eight or nine
years ago, Julie and I hiked there, stopped to fill
canteens at Le Barry’s fountain, to drink while
we pushed through brambles on the path, the signs
for hikers leaf-obscured. I remember
the path, thorns, thirst, sunlight, apprehension,
but not emerging in the clearing where
the blond walls rose, sunshot, veering to amber
in shade. What was the wind like? How did the air
smell? Is this memory or invention?
Fourteen lines, the rhyme scheme abba abba for the octave, cedcdc the sestet — Petrarchan. The octave remembers a friendship from the past, the sestet a turn (volta) to the pensive, doubtful, coming in the eighth line (“I remember”).
Sonnet (“little song”) is said to have originated in Sicily in early 13th century, invented by one Giacomo Lentini, poet and notary. From the very start the sonnet was strictly defined as a fourteen-line poem. Fourteen is an iconic number in Christianity denoting salvation, particularly counting the genealogy of Jesus back to King David in three sets of fourteen ancestors. In Hebrew the letters yod stands for ‘10’, the daled for ‘4’; combined meaning ‘deliverance.” In Shia Islam, the “Fourteen Infallibles” are especially revered, comprising Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, and the twelve Imams. A fifteen-line poem might be good but isn’t a sonnet; calling it a “fifteen-line sonnet” begs the question. Hacker has stayed faithful to the sonnet form, seemingly without effort.
Why are formal sonnets rhymed? It is difficult not to rhyme in Italian. Petrarch wrote over three hundred, most about his obsessive love for “Laura’. Shakespeare brought about one hundred fifty-four sonnets into rhymed English, similarly engaged with a young aristocrat or the mysterious ‘dark lady’. Shakespeare, influenced by Chaucer, ended his sonnets with a rhyming couplet.
Why are sonnet lines ten syllables long (sometimes eleven)? Chaucer introduced the rule, one closest to English speech, the iambic pentameter: five pair of two syllables sounding like the lup-dup of heartbeats. Robert Frost said there is only regular iambic or irregular iambic.
Why in classic sonnets is there a break, a ‘turn’ (volta) a change of tone at the eighth or ninth lines? If the lines before the turn pose a question, the reply follows. Shakespeare’s closing couplet was his turn.
Bard Professor Joseph Luzzi has said of the sonnet, “A well-worn road. Poets writing sonnets today understand its history, gesture even when experimenting; rule-bound still.” Brava to Marilyn Hacker for maintaining the tradition.
Apr 30 2026
TRANSITIONS – sonnets by Marilyn Hacker
Poetry review – TRANSITIONS: Norbert Hirschhorn responds to Marilyn Hacker’s new collection by reflecting on the sonnet form that she handles so very well
Transitions. New and Selected Sonnets
Marilyn Hacker
Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, 2026
ISBN-13: 978-1-57131-572-4
237 pages $20
Marilyn Hacker has written formal poetry for decades, from the sedate sonnet to the crashingly wild canzone. [Disclosure: Marilyn has been my friend and tutor for nearly twenty years.] She is equally adept at translations, French in particular but also with co-authors from Arabic. Transitions: New and Selected continues her poetic journey. Here is a new sonnet:
My back’s a misery. My mind aligns
and doesn’t note the fortress on the hill-
side, beige, foliage-traced, sheltered a vill-
age once, then sheltered nuns, now, dwarf-oaks, pines,
and plane trees: Castelas. Once, eight or nine
years ago, Julie and I hiked there, stopped to fill
canteens at Le Barry’s fountain, to drink while
we pushed through brambles on the path, the signs
for hikers leaf-obscured. I remember
the path, thorns, thirst, sunlight, apprehension,
but not emerging in the clearing where
the blond walls rose, sunshot, veering to amber
in shade. What was the wind like? How did the air
smell? Is this memory or invention?
Fourteen lines, the rhyme scheme abba abba for the octave, cedcdc the sestet — Petrarchan. The octave remembers a friendship from the past, the sestet a turn (volta) to the pensive, doubtful, coming in the eighth line (“I remember”).
Sonnet (“little song”) is said to have originated in Sicily in early 13th century, invented by one Giacomo Lentini, poet and notary. From the very start the sonnet was strictly defined as a fourteen-line poem. Fourteen is an iconic number in Christianity denoting salvation, particularly counting the genealogy of Jesus back to King David in three sets of fourteen ancestors. In Hebrew the letters yod stands for ‘10’, the daled for ‘4’; combined meaning ‘deliverance.” In Shia Islam, the “Fourteen Infallibles” are especially revered, comprising Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, and the twelve Imams. A fifteen-line poem might be good but isn’t a sonnet; calling it a “fifteen-line sonnet” begs the question. Hacker has stayed faithful to the sonnet form, seemingly without effort.
Why are formal sonnets rhymed? It is difficult not to rhyme in Italian. Petrarch wrote over three hundred, most about his obsessive love for “Laura’. Shakespeare brought about one hundred fifty-four sonnets into rhymed English, similarly engaged with a young aristocrat or the mysterious ‘dark lady’. Shakespeare, influenced by Chaucer, ended his sonnets with a rhyming couplet.
Why are sonnet lines ten syllables long (sometimes eleven)? Chaucer introduced the rule, one closest to English speech, the iambic pentameter: five pair of two syllables sounding like the lup-dup of heartbeats. Robert Frost said there is only regular iambic or irregular iambic.
Why in classic sonnets is there a break, a ‘turn’ (volta) a change of tone at the eighth or ninth lines? If the lines before the turn pose a question, the reply follows. Shakespeare’s closing couplet was his turn.
Bard Professor Joseph Luzzi has said of the sonnet, “A well-worn road. Poets writing sonnets today understand its history, gesture even when experimenting; rule-bound still.” Brava to Marilyn Hacker for maintaining the tradition.