How does Marilyn Hacker utilize the sestina form in her poetry?

• A. By employing it in both 'Forage Sestina' and 'Towards Autumn'.
• B. By using a free verse without fixed end words.
• C. By combining with haiku forms.
• D. By translating ancient forms only.

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how a strict poetic form can shape meaning by repeating elements. A sestina uses six end-words that rotate through the six stanzas and into a final envoy, which creates a circular, braided texture. Marilyn Hacker puts this constraint to work in more than one poem, showing that she uses the same form across pieces rather than treating it as a one-off experiment. In Forage Sestina, the six end-words recur in a way that accumulates associations around themes like gathering, hunger, and work, so each repetition recontextualizes the same terms and deepens their resonance. In Towards Autumn, the same pattern lends a sense of cyclical time and memory as the season shifts, with the repeated words echoing through changing imagery and mood. The effect is a unity that the strict form provides, while the surrounding lines push in different directions each time the end-words reappear. Because the form is essential to how the poems unfold, the best answer is that she employs the sestina in both works. The other options miss the core pattern: it isn’t free verse without fixed end-words, it isn’t about mixing with haiku, and it isn’t about translating ancient forms.