With Taking Notice …, Marilyn Hacker has written what constitutes the last volume in a trilogy. Her concerns are basically the same—esthetic and sexual confrontation—as they were in Presentation Piece and Separations. It is their sequence that swells a progress. Their titles, effectively, speak for themselves. The first book is an introduction to and exploration of relationships, friendly and familial; the second centers on the difficulty and eventual disintegration of a long-distance marriage. This third book, a taking and nailing-up of notice, begins with "one man, not some indifferent Muse to me" and ends with "the woman I love, as old, as new to me / as any moment of delight."

Running in a kind of counterpoint beneath those major chords is the poet's relationship with her child, Iva Alyxander, her birth, babyhood, and growth….

Loving and mothering, feeling and form. These are Hacker's preoccupations. It should be...