American - Poet | November 27, 1942 -
The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.
Marilyn Hacker
LanguageTransitionLostImportant
The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.
MeLanguageKindSoundTensionPull
Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.
GoodWritingEnergyWhateverAbout
Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.
TimeMyselfPoetryThinkLanguage
Translation makes me look at how a poem is put together in a different way, without the personal investment of the poem I'm writing myself, but equally closely technically.
MyselfTogetherMeWritingLookWay
There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.
WritingLanguageConnectedWayUse
My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.
MotherTeacherWomanMedicalSchool
I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.
EditingKindsCommercialJobsMostly
I started to send my work to journals when I was 26, which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years.
WorkCourageReadingQuestionUp
We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.
GoodWeekBadGood And BadSometimes
I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.
ReadingStoryChairEasyYouKnow
I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.
HopePoetryHealingPotentialBad
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Marilyn Hacker quotes