Anthony Hecht, now in his eightieth year, has earned a place alongside such poets as W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Bishop. Here under one cover are his three most recent collections–The Transparent Man, Flight Among the Tombs, and The Darkness and the Light. The perfect companion to his Collected Earlier Poems (continuously in print since 1990), this book brings the eloquent sound of Hecht’s music to bear on a wide variety of human dramas: from a young woman dying of leukemia to the tangled love affairs of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; from Death as the director of Hollywood films to the unexpected image of Marcel Proust as a figure skater.
He glides with a gaining confidence, inscribes Tentative passages, thinks again, backtracks, Comes to a minute point, Then wheels about in widening sweeps and lobes, Large Palmer cursives and smooth entrelacs, Preoccupied, intent
On a subtle, long-drawn style and pliant script Incised with twin steel blades and qualified Perfectly to express, With arms flung wide or gloved hands firmly gripped Behind his back, attentively, clear-eyed, A glancing happiness.
WINNER
| 2000 Frost Medal
“Hecht’s highly formal poems sound majestic, orderly, and intense. He is one of the contemporary masters . . . of the high traditional English style . . . whatever poetry is supposed to do, it seldom gets more precise and articulate.” –Peter Davison, Boston Globe
“Formal and exacting . . . [Hecht’s] elegant, insistent humanity, surfacing persistently like springs among the severe crags of his dark morality, will give his poetry life and interest long after the smoother pebbles of today’s more popular voices are washed to silence by the sea.” –Cynthia Haven, Washington Post Book World
“Hecht is . . . one of the great synthesizers of the modern moment, a vistionary poet capable of conveying private experience in public forms . . . No other poet in English has fashioned such disillusioned beauty.” –David Mason, The Weekly Standard
“This book is a magnificent addition to the library of any reader who still values verse.” –John Mark Eberhart, Kansas City Star
ANTHONY HECHT, born in New York City in 1923, was the author of eight books of poetry, including The Hard Hours, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. He also wrote several volumes of essays and criticism, among them The Hidden Law, a book-length study of the poetry of W. H. Auden. Appointed poet laureate of the United States in 1982, his other honors included the Ruth B. Lilly Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Eugenio Montale Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the National Medal of Arts. He received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome; the Bogliasco, Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations; and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he died in 2004.
View titles by Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht, now in his eightieth year, has earned a place alongside such poets as W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Bishop. Here under one cover are his three most recent collections–The Transparent Man, Flight Among the Tombs, and The Darkness and the Light. The perfect companion to his Collected Earlier Poems (continuously in print since 1990), this book brings the eloquent sound of Hecht’s music to bear on a wide variety of human dramas: from a young woman dying of leukemia to the tangled love affairs of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; from Death as the director of Hollywood films to the unexpected image of Marcel Proust as a figure skater.
He glides with a gaining confidence, inscribes Tentative passages, thinks again, backtracks, Comes to a minute point, Then wheels about in widening sweeps and lobes, Large Palmer cursives and smooth entrelacs, Preoccupied, intent
On a subtle, long-drawn style and pliant script Incised with twin steel blades and qualified Perfectly to express, With arms flung wide or gloved hands firmly gripped Behind his back, attentively, clear-eyed, A glancing happiness.
Awards
WINNER
| 2000 Frost Medal
Reviews
“Hecht’s highly formal poems sound majestic, orderly, and intense. He is one of the contemporary masters . . . of the high traditional English style . . . whatever poetry is supposed to do, it seldom gets more precise and articulate.” –Peter Davison, Boston Globe
“Formal and exacting . . . [Hecht’s] elegant, insistent humanity, surfacing persistently like springs among the severe crags of his dark morality, will give his poetry life and interest long after the smoother pebbles of today’s more popular voices are washed to silence by the sea.” –Cynthia Haven, Washington Post Book World
“Hecht is . . . one of the great synthesizers of the modern moment, a vistionary poet capable of conveying private experience in public forms . . . No other poet in English has fashioned such disillusioned beauty.” –David Mason, The Weekly Standard
“This book is a magnificent addition to the library of any reader who still values verse.” –John Mark Eberhart, Kansas City Star
Author
ANTHONY HECHT, born in New York City in 1923, was the author of eight books of poetry, including The Hard Hours, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. He also wrote several volumes of essays and criticism, among them The Hidden Law, a book-length study of the poetry of W. H. Auden. Appointed poet laureate of the United States in 1982, his other honors included the Ruth B. Lilly Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Eugenio Montale Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the National Medal of Arts. He received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome; the Bogliasco, Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations; and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he died in 2004.
View titles by Anthony Hecht
