Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life

Yezzi (More Things in Heaven) delivers an affectionate and meticulous biography of fellow poet Anthony Hecht (1923–2004). Beginning with Hecht’s childhood in a wealthy German Jewish enclave on New York’s Upper East Side, Yezzi details his subject’s formative years as a budding poet at Bard College and the horrors he witnessed fighting in WWII, including when he took part in the liberation of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Tracing the development of Hecht’s style, Yezzi explains that during Hecht’s studies as a non-matriculating “special student” at Kenyon College after the war, he adopted mentor John Crowe Ransom’s “Eliotic impersonality,” which sought to disguise autobiographical elements and consider them as if at a remove. The period from 1967 to 1971 was transformative for Hecht, Yezzi suggests, describing how during that time Hecht won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hard Hours, which “bolstered his reputation and career,” and married his former student, Helen D’Alessandro, a book editor who offered him reprieve from his “periods of melancholy.” Yezzi provides astute analysis of how Hecht’s life influenced his poetry—noting that “Aubade,” one of his last poems, was inspired by his contemplation of “the anguish his death would cause” Helen—and the careful research, drawn from Hecht’s archives and letters and interviews with his friends, brings the poet to vivid life. This will stand as the definitive account of an influential American poet. (Nov.)