Thematically, the poems in Taking Notice, by Marilyn Hacker, betray their imprisonment in the material present. Although there is much talk about the merging of affectionate bodies and the approach to others as objects of adoration and desire, the poems do not imitate the transport to which they frequently refer. Neither are they meditations at one remove from the experience; the mood of the volume is one of manic vigilance before the monotony of the present. The most characteristic rhetorical device is the catalogue of highly textured, usually exotic things, arranged in a kind of glossy ad for poetic "taste"…. There is here no beauty that makes the heart yearn, no broad consciousness guiding the verses, and no spiritual truth. There are only things.

The tyranny of objects is marked not only by the prevalence of the catalogue, but also by the propensity of the poet's diction to...