SOURCE: Hudak, Kristen A. Review of Winter Numbers. Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 11, no. 1 (January 1996): 35-6.

In the following review, Hudak praises Hacker's poetic technique as well as her skill in dealing with themes of life, love, and death.

Marilyn Hacker's diagnosis of breast cancer was a life-altering discovery that undoubtedly prompted the poet to ponder what it means to be alive. Her latest volume of poetry, Winter Numbers, chronicles her strugglings with life's big questions—ancestry, the everyday, the end of a romance, and death. How these four themes relate to each other is what interests (and what makes) Hacker.

The book begins its reflection leitmotif in “Against Elegies.” Here, Hacker's speaker tells the reader that what makes an elegy so fruitless is that “no one was promised a shapely life/ending in a tutelary vision.” Hacker is against elegies indeed—including one for...