Background
Anthony Evan Hecht was born on June 16, 1923 in New York, United States to German-Jewish parents.
1947
Anthony Hecht at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1947. Photo by C. Cameron Macauley.
Hecht's grave at Bard College Cemetery in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Anthony Evan Hecht was born on June 16, 1923 in New York, United States to German-Jewish parents.
Anthony Hecht was educated at various schools in the city but showed no great academic ability, something he would later refer to as "conspicuous". However, as a freshman English student at Bard College in New York he discovered the works of Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas. It was at this point that he decided he would become a poet. Hecht's parents were not happy at his plans and tried to discourage them.
In 1944, upon completing his final year at Bard, Anthony Hecht was drafted into the 97th Infantry Division and was sent to the battlefields in Europe. His most significant experience occurred on April 23, 1945 when Hecht's division helped liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was ordered to interview French prisoners in the hope of gathering evidence on the camp's commanders.
After the war ended, Anthony Hecht was sent to Japan, where he became a staff writer with Stars and Stripes. He returned to the United States in March 1946 and immediately took advantage of the G.I. bill to study under the poet-critic John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College, Ohio. He later received his master's degree from Columbia University.
In 1947 Anthony Hecht attended the University of Iowa and taught in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, together with writer Robie Macauley, with whom Hecht had served during World War II, but, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after his war service, gave it up swiftly to enter psychoanalysis.
Anthony Hecht released his first collection, A Summoning of Stones, in 1954. In 1993 he published The Hidden Law, a critical reading of Auden's body of work. In his second book, The Hard Hours, Anthony Hecht first addressed his own experiences of World War II - memories that had caused him to have a nervous breakdown in 1959. He spent three months in hospital following his breakdown, although he was spared electric shock therapy.
Hecht's main source of income was as a teacher of poetry, most notably at the University of Rochester, where he taught from 1967 to 1985. He also spent varying lengths of time teaching at other notable institutions such as Smith, Bard, Harvard, Georgetown, and Yale. Between 1982 and 1984, he held the esteemed position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
Anthony Hecht died on October 20, 2004, at his home in Washington, D. C.; he is buried at the cemetery at Bard College. One month later, on November 17, Hecht was awarded the National Medal of Arts, accepted on his behalf by his wife, Helen Hecht.