Who Said

Jennifer Michael Hecht

Who Said, Jennifer Michael Hecht’s brilliant third collection of poetry, playfully asks that perpetual question, effecting mischievous congress with some of the most iconic poems in the English language. Poems such as Keats’s “To Autumn,” Blake’s “The Tyger,” Bishop’s “One Art,” and more—solve the book’s cryptograms to discover the poems referenced throughout—are directly called upon to infuse Hecht’s own poems with sharp, witty satire, and the raw longings they mask. Who Said outwardly deals with the classical and celebrated as it also reveals the deeply personal peregrinations of an acutely aware woman—poet, philosopher, friend—fearlessly examining the struggles of life and love, from which not everyone emerges.

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ISBN: 9781556594496

Format: Paperback

Now and Telling

Now I’ve told and there’s nothing worse
to find out about me.

Where I come from there were curses
that cursed me.

Herbs and drink to drub the screech,
talk to drain the ink from me.

I’ve told and there’s nothing worse.

Talk to drain the ink from me,
to find out about me.

Where I come from there were curses.

Herbs and drink to drub the screech
that cursed me.

Now I’ve told and there’s nothing worse
to find out about me.

Talk to drain the ink from me.

Now that I’ve told there is nothing
to hide from strangers.

I still live so I surmise I am forgiven
for being so foul as a bird called that.

Now I’ve told the secret of the
words. Nothing better or worse.

Where I come from there was a curse
now I’ve told and something is better.

Nothing is worse
now I can hunt, now I cut runts,

now I am the mistress of the curse.
Words obey my orders.

About the Author

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of The Next Ancient World (2001), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and Funny (2005). She has published poetry and prose in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. She is the author of the bestseller Doubt: A History (2003). Her other books include The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France (2003), which won the Phi …

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Reviews

“If there is a fourth wall in reading, Hecht has broken it… Split into nine short sections, where the often formal poems refer to each other, [Who Said] embodies, in turn, defiance and curiosity.” —Publishers Weekly

“Jennifer Michael Hecht writes delightfully tricky poems that wildly bend the sense of our language.” —Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate