Background
HECHT, Anthony was born on January 16, 1923 in New York, United States. Son of Melvyn Hahlo and Dorothea (nee Holzman) Hecht.
(Alongside Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, and other pilla...)
Alongside Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, and other pillars of twentieth-century poetry, Anthony Hecht joins the Borzoi Poetry series. Hecht, whose writing rings with the cadences of the King James Bible, and who, as an infantryman at the end of World War II, participated in the liberation of the concentration camps, lived and experienced the best and worst of the twentieth century. Readers of this volumethe first selected poems to be made from Hechts seven individual volumeswill be captivated by Hechts dark music and allusions to the literature of the past. As J. D. McClatchy explains in his introduction, Hecht was a poet for whom formal elegance was inextricably bound up with the dramatic force, thematic ambition, and powerful emotions in each poem. The rules of his art, which he both honored and transformed, are moral principles meant finally to reveal the structure of human dilemmas and sympathies. This elevated sense of what poetry can accomplish defines our experience of reading Hecht, and will ensure his place in the canon for years to come. Adam and Eve knew such perfection once, Gods finger in the cloud, and on the ground Nothing but springtime, nothing else at all. But in our fallen state where the blood hunts For blood, and rises at the hunting sound, What do we know of lasting since the fall? Who has not, in the oil and heat of youth, Thought of the flourishing of the almond tree, The grasshopper, and the failing of desire, And thought his tongue might pierce the secrecy Of the six-pointed starlight, and might choir A secret-voweled, unutterable truth? from A Poem for Julia
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( Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht (19232004) w...)
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht (19232004) was known not only for his masterful control of form and language but also for his wit and humor. With the help of Helen Hecht, the poets widow, Jonathan F. S. Post combed through more than 4,000 letters to produce an intimate look into the poets mind and art across a lifetime. The letters range from Hechts early days at summer camp to college at Bard, to the front lines of World War II, to travels abroad in France and Italy, to marriage, and to fame as a poet and critic. Along the way, Hecht corresponded with well-known poets such as John Hollander, James Merrill, Anne Sexton, and Richard Wilbur. Those interested in the lives of contemporary poets will read these highly personal letters with delight and surprise.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AQ0XC2C/?tag=2022091-20
HECHT, Anthony was born on January 16, 1923 in New York, United States. Son of Melvyn Hahlo and Dorothea (nee Holzman) Hecht.
Bard College, and Columbia University.
Professor, of English, Bard College 1961-1967. Faculty; Professor, of Rhetoric and
( The fruit of a lifetime's reading and thinking about li...)
( Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht (19232004) w...)
( In these engaging lectures, the eminent poet Anthony He...)
(The American poet's verses deal with nature, foreign them...)
(Alongside Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, and other pilla...)
( THE VENETIAN VESPERS (1979) In its clear-eyed mercy tow...)
(Anthony Hecht, now in his eightieth year, has earned a pl...)
University of Rochester 1967, John H. Deane. National Institute of Arts and Letters, American Academy, of Arts and Science.
Married 1st Patricia Harris in 1954 (divorced in 1961), two son. Married 2nd Helen d"Alessandro in 1971, one son.