The Education of the Poet: A Colloquy with Richard Howard and Marilyn Hacker

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T e following conversation between Marilyn Hacker and Richard Howard occurred in August 1998, in Mr. Howard's office at Columbia University. Mr. Howard is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, most recently Trappings (1999), and over 150 translations from the French. In 1983 he received the American Book Award for his translation of the complete Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. In 1970 he received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and in 1984 he was made a Chevalier de 1' Ordre National du Merite by the French government. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters and serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and as poetry editor of the Paris Review. Ms. Hacker is the author of nine books, including Presentation Piece, which received the National Book Award in 1975, and Winter Numbers (1995), which received a Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Award from The Nation magazine and the Academy of American Poets. She has served as editor of 13th Moon and the Kenyon Review and was recently (that is, since this conversation) appointed the director of the M.A. program in English literature and creative writing at the City College of New York. Her most recent book, Squares and Courtyards, was published in January. Their conversation, which focused on the education of the poet, began when they remembered admiring each other's poems, years ago,