Life & Wisdom Quote by Marilyn Hacker

“Good writing gives energy” is a poet’s standard that sounds simple until you notice how ruthless it is. Marilyn Hacker isn’t praising prettiness, correctness, or even “important” subject matter. She’s setting the bar at charge: language that transmits voltage from the page into the reader, regardless of whether the topic is sex, politics, grocery lists, grief, or a city bus. “Whatever it is about” quietly strips away an entire hierarchy of respectable themes. No subject gets to coast on relevance; no “small” subject gets dismissed as trivial if the sentences are alive.

The subtext is a rebuke to two common alibis. First, the writer who leans on content as moral insulation: if the topic is serious, the writing can be slack. Second, the writer who fetishizes style as decorative surface: verbal sparkle without force. Hacker’s line insists that form and propulsion are inseparable. Energy isn’t just speed or cleverness; it’s compression, rhythm, friction, the feeling that every word is doing work and pushing forward.

Context matters: Hacker is known for formal rigor and for bringing politics, sexuality, and urban immediacy into metered, traditionally “high” structures. In that light, the quote doubles as a defense of craft against the idea that passion alone is authenticity. The poems that last aren’t the ones with the “right” themes; they’re the ones whose language makes attention feel inevitable.