A thickness of particulars : the poetry of Anthony Hecht / Jonathan Post.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Post, Jonathan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hecht, Anthony, 1923-2004--Correspondence.

Hecht, Anthony.

Hecht, Anthony, 1923-2004.

Poets, American--20th century--Correspondence.

Poets, American.

Genre:

Correspondence.

Personal correspondence.

Physical Description:

xviii, 294 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Corby : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

This is the first book-length study of one of the great formal poets of the later twentieth century (1923-2004). Making use of Hecht's correspondence, which the author edited, it situates Hecht's writings in the context of pre- and post-World-War II verse, including poetry written by W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, and Richard Wilbur. In nine chapters, the book ranges over Hecht's full career, with special emphasis placed on the effects of the war on his memory; Hecht participated in the final push by the Allied troops in Europe and was involved in the liberation of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. The study explores the important place Venice and Italy occupied in his imagination as well as the significance of the visual and dramatic arts and music more generally.

Contents:

1 "The Book of Yolek," the Sestina, and the Tattoo 1

2 Circa 1950: Eclectic Hecht among the Nightingales 17

3 About Suffering: History, Domesticity, and the Making of The Hard Hours 47

4 Stretching Out, Looking Within: In Medias Res, with James Merrill 90

5 "The Venetian Vespers": "Full of the splendor of the insubstantial" 113

6 "A shutter angles out": Hecht's Ekphrastic Verse 137

7 Shechtspeare 173

8 Later Flourishings: The Transparent Man and Flight Among the Tombs 210

9 The Darkness and the Light and the Art of Reticence 251.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199660711

0199660719

OCLC:

917374559