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Collected Earlier Poems of Anthony Hecht: The Complete Texts of The Hard Hours, Millions of Strange Shadows, and The Venetian Vespers
THE VENETIAN VESPERS (1979)
“In its clear-eyed mercy toward human weakness, Anthony Hecht’s poetry goes from strength to strength. The Venetian Vespers is at once an intense corroboration and an ample extension of his subtle, supple talents. Nothing humane is alien to him… There is a handful of short poems that are fostered alike by beauty and fear. But it is the four long poems that confirm Hecht as a poet of the widest apprehensions and comprehension, and this without the gigantism that so haunts American poetic ambition.”
—Christopher Ricks, The New York Times Book Review
MILLIONS OF STRANGE SHADOWS (1977)
“The high artistry of Anthony Hecht has been to nurture his own gift, and to work at it with the deliberateness and steadiness that it deserved from him... Emotional intensity and formal power were combined in Hecht from his beginnings… The thirty poems in Millions of Strange Shadows are all fully written , but several truly are the best he has published and are very likely to endure. The very best is ‘ An Epistle,’ which is a lesson in profound, controlled subjectivity and self-revelation, an exact antithesis to the opaque squalors of ‘confessional’ poets. Almost equally remarkable is ‘Coming Home,’ in which the poet John Clare receives a deeper interpretation than any critic has afforded him…”
—Harold Bloom, The New Republic
THE HARD HOURS (1968)
“Anthony Hecht’s first volume of poems, A Summoning of Stones , established him as one of the most accomplished of his extremely accomplished generation. His work was remarkable enough for its classical poise and elegance, but it also had a weight which set it apart. Since then his poetry has come clear in a direction nobody could have predicted…He did the most difficult thing of this most fastidious and elegant of poets shed every artifice and began to write with absolute raw simplicity and directness. Only a poet with an immense burden of something to say ever dreams of taking this course, and only an inspired artist can bring it off. The result here has been some of the most powerful and unforgettable poems at present being written in America,”
—Ted Hughes
“In its clear-eyed mercy toward human weakness, Anthony Hecht’s poetry goes from strength to strength. The Venetian Vespers is at once an intense corroboration and an ample extension of his subtle, supple talents. Nothing humane is alien to him… There is a handful of short poems that are fostered alike by beauty and fear. But it is the four long poems that confirm Hecht as a poet of the widest apprehensions and comprehension, and this without the gigantism that so haunts American poetic ambition.”
—Christopher Ricks, The New York Times Book Review
MILLIONS OF STRANGE SHADOWS (1977)
“The high artistry of Anthony Hecht has been to nurture his own gift, and to work at it with the deliberateness and steadiness that it deserved from him... Emotional intensity and formal power were combined in Hecht from his beginnings… The thirty poems in Millions of Strange Shadows are all fully written , but several truly are the best he has published and are very likely to endure. The very best is ‘ An Epistle,’ which is a lesson in profound, controlled subjectivity and self-revelation, an exact antithesis to the opaque squalors of ‘confessional’ poets. Almost equally remarkable is ‘Coming Home,’ in which the poet John Clare receives a deeper interpretation than any critic has afforded him…”
—Harold Bloom, The New Republic
THE HARD HOURS (1968)
“Anthony Hecht’s first volume of poems, A Summoning of Stones , established him as one of the most accomplished of his extremely accomplished generation. His work was remarkable enough for its classical poise and elegance, but it also had a weight which set it apart. Since then his poetry has come clear in a direction nobody could have predicted…He did the most difficult thing of this most fastidious and elegant of poets shed every artifice and began to write with absolute raw simplicity and directness. Only a poet with an immense burden of something to say ever dreams of taking this course, and only an inspired artist can bring it off. The result here has been some of the most powerful and unforgettable poems at present being written in America,”
—Ted Hughes
- GenresPoetry
288 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 5, 2017
Only read More Light, More Light, another poem that influenced Donald Ray Pollock. All I can say is short and depressing.
November 19, 2012
I've actually read only Hard Hours and Venetian Vespers butthey are not listed on Goodreads as individual titles. I love Hecht. His precision, elegance, control are all reasons I go to him when I've read too many bad poems by people who really seem to have no aptitude for writing poetry.
December 15, 2025
I waited until I finished The Venetian Vespers to write about this entire collection. Since the time I first read Hecht (about six months ago) his verse has become the kind of concentrated comfort to which I return in order to experience an elegant repose.
Two things occur when you read a great poet's good collection. First, you marvel at the easy world of sounds, its endless permutations holding up a world more real and ephemeral than a world tirelessly sustained through excellent (but nevertheless on a different plane) prose. Second, you are quite certain that this particular poet has now exhausted the patterns capable of being produced in formal English. Each great poet momentarily kills the future of his language.
And yet, the patterns reappear. Some other ear listens to the sound of the same pebble, but only after the second ripple has drowned the sharper sound of the first dip.
Two things occur when you read a great poet's good collection. First, you marvel at the easy world of sounds, its endless permutations holding up a world more real and ephemeral than a world tirelessly sustained through excellent (but nevertheless on a different plane) prose. Second, you are quite certain that this particular poet has now exhausted the patterns capable of being produced in formal English. Each great poet momentarily kills the future of his language.
And yet, the patterns reappear. Some other ear listens to the sound of the same pebble, but only after the second ripple has drowned the sharper sound of the first dip.
January 17, 2009
Some of my favorite poems from high school/early college. Pretty grim stuff. I don't know anything about poetry, but Hecht seems to have such control over the meter and structure of his poems. Really fascinating.
December 20, 2024
Peerless, if you ask me. Hecht's standards of form, diction, and syntax completely outclass most of the stuff that passes for poetry today--yet without the air of snobbery one might expect of a staunch 20th-century formalist. *cue anxiety of influence*
Want to read
January 29, 2024811.54 Hec
September 15, 2008
Along with the later poems, a treasure of craft, talent, dedication and imagination that makes you see how the tradition can always be renewed and practiced in the present.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews