Poetry Thursday

I vividly remember the first time I read anything by Marilyn Hacker. I was sitting in a Starbucks in London Bridge waiting for someone to arrive for a meeting, and I had to stand up with excitment. It was as if I'd just had the biggest adrenalin rush - similar to when I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. That breathless feeling, almost like fear, that the writer was going somewhere completely daring and unexpected, not with content but with structure. So my poem recommendation for today is Hacker's Scars on Paper, and I thoroughly recommend her recent collection Essays on Departure if you're tempted to read more.