Letter to Marilyn Hacker by Liz Grisaru
It’s true, Ms. Hacker, there is no reason
for you to know my name although for sure
long ago we lingered on the same street corners
and looked at girls, waiting for the lights to change
in the old days when being young New Yorkers
was enough, never mind queer and maybe poets.
Once under the high sun of June I passed out after Pride;
dropped outside a bar to the curb like an unstrung elevator
where someone faceless pressed my head between my knees
and handed me a can of seltzer. I was OK down there
fixed to the sidewalk below the rowdy crowd,
the streaming delta of ribbons and banners.
You will find these scenes and many others
in the book I haven’t written yet. My point is, in parallel
you took your poetry to Paris, I opened into childbirth
and the raising of wild things. We wandered in wilderness,
lost friends and lovers, lost the innocence that comes
from owing nothing to no one, until at last you do.
Like you, I shall soon expatriate myself
from this country born of fathers,
like you to Paris, to the child I raised, in part for love
in part because what I need to understand
is whether the hook and eye of English meter
can survive a winter siege
of Gallic timbre, its tempos and ellisions.
Ms. Hacker, I will look you up when I am settled there
and if you have time and patience enough
will ask you how your native language does
living so far from our common vernacular
of being queer and young and maybe poets
in an America of hope on street corners and noisy Pride parades.
Liz Grisaru lives in upstate New York, where she raised two children with her wife, one of whom has settled permanently in Paris. She lived in the UK and in Switzerland as a child, teenager, and young adult and later
spent sixteen years in Brooklyn, her first grown-up home. She started writing poetry shortly before the pandemic hit, after a long creative silence. Her work has appeared in small journals in the United States, such as Months to Years, Poetica Magazine, Trolley, and the online publications of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.
Posted on October 13th 2023