SOURCE: Rothschild, Matthew. Review of Winter Numbers. Progressive 59, no. 1 (January 1995): 43-4.

In the following review of Winter Numbers, Rothschild praises the humor and tenderness of Hacker's verse.

This is the seventh volume of poems by Marilyn Hacker, who for the last few years was the editor—and a brilliant one at that—of The Kenyon Review. (It was she who brought Campo to my attention). But last summer she was cashiered, she told The Advocate, suspecting that her lesbian orientation and radical politics were too much for that tightly buttoned magazine—another brave moment in publishing,

Death stalks this book. The opening long poem, “Against Elegies,” sets the tone from the very first lines:

James has cancer. Catherine has cancer. Melvin has AIDS. Whom will I call, and get no answer? 

Halfway through the poem, Hacker mentions “the day I meet / the lump in my breast,” and her...