SOURCE: Cameron, Esther. Review of Squares and Courtyards. Prairie Schooner 75, no. 3 (fall 2001): 186-89.

In the following review, Cameron discusses Hacker's Squares and Courtyards, a collection informed by the poet's battle with breast cancer.

Marilyn Hacker's ninth collection is written under the aspect of transiency. Reflected in the poems are the realities of a breast cancer diagnosis, mastectomy, chemotherapy, a body no longer whole, the fear of recurrence, the waking up to the “scandal” of death; also the illnesses and deaths of relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers: other sufferers from cancer in the poet's circle, the victims of aids and drugs cared for by her lover, the poet's daughter's best friend in a car crash, the poet's grandmother in a pedestrian accident long ago, the victims of the Holocaust and World War II, a vital elderly friend, a revered older poet (Muriel Rukeyser), a homeless man whose funeral is described...