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Article: Winter Numbers: Poems.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- November 7, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Twenty years ago, Marilyn Hacker's unique voice startled American readers when her first book of poems, Presentation Piece, won a National Book Award. Most astonishing was its doubleness, its way of being simultaneously elegant and lowdown, cranky and lyrical:
At six, when April chills our hands and
feet
walking downtown, we stop at Clancy's
bar
or Bickford's, where the part-time
hustlers are,