The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht

by Anthony Hecht, Jonathan F. S. Post (Editor)

Spanning seven decades, these often intimate, brilliantly astute letters by the eminent poet Anthony Hecht reflect a body of work that influenced the history of twentieth-century American poetry. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht (1923–2004) 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 poet’s widow, Jonathan F. S. Post combed through more than 4,000 letters to produce an intimate look into the poet’s mind and art across a lifetime. The letters range from Hecht’s 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.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 27, 2012

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a review in TriQuarterly. Here's the link: http://www.triquarterly.org/reviews/s...

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The attitudes of most poets, I would imagine, must oscillate between feeling that a number of their best effects have gone unnoticed, and feeling that they have been too generously dealt with. Usually far more of the former than the latter. It is a common hope that posterity, which Emerson called bribeless, beyond entreaty, and not to be over-awed, will come to see what once was missed. I have known some particularly bad poets who have survived on the thin gruel of this hope...And every poet who is not a fool must resign himself to a lifetime in this equivocal no-man's land."

[Jacob Moose]

“It seems to me you are quite right in your feeling that poems don’t console. I have never felt them to be consoling, in the usual sense of the word. Instead, they provide a curious kind of communion, which is what Auden must have meant when he said that our reading of literary works was a way of breaking bread with the dead. We become aware of certain kinds of intelligence, resonances of feeling, sympathetic vibrations of knowledge that speak to us from the words of total strangers, and it may be that we feel less alone — if that can be called consolation.”