Marilyn Hackers Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems

Marilyn Hacker's Mother-Daughter Relationship Exposed in Selected Poems 1965-1990 If Selected Poems 1965-1990 can be taken as an evenly representative sample of Marilyn Hacker's work, motherhood does not seem 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 Hacker's 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 don't think that we get the opportunity, through these poems, to judge whether or not Hacker is a "good mother," I would say 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 thus a good role model for her daughter. As illustration of my idea of Hacker's space for mothering, in "La Fontaine de Vaucluse" appear the following lines (p. 116) referring to Iva: Sometimes she still swims at my center; sometimes she is a four-year-old an ocean...