Marilyn Hackers Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems

Marilyn Hackers Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems 1965-1990If Selected Poems 1965-1990 can be taken as an evenly representative sample of Marilyn Hackers work, maternal quality does not take care to be the single central focus of her life or her work. Hacker has quite a few poems about or for her daughter Iva, and Iva is mentioned in many other poems, yet much of Hackers work focuses on other aspects of her life and interests. The fact that Hacker does not focus exclusively on her motherhood seems important in and of itself. Though I dont think that we get the opportunity, through these poems, to judge whether or not Hacker is a good mother, I would posit that her apparent ability to be simultaneously a mother and an artist and a lover and a daughter makes her a healthy, balanced individual and indeed a good role model for her daughter. As illustration of my idea of Hackers space for mothering, in La Fontaine de Vaucluse appear the following lines (p. 116) re ferring to Iva Sometimes she compose swims at my center sometimesshe is a four-year-old an ocean...