Poet, born in New York City, New York, USA. He began studying at Bard College, NY (1944), but at the outbreak of World War 2 was drafted into the US Army 97th Infantry Division, serving in Europe until discharged in 1946. Granted his BA in absentia in 1944, after the War he continued his studies at Kenyon College, OH and Columbia University (MA 1950). His first poetry collection, A Summoning of Stones (1954) was well received but he gained more recognition for his second collection, The Hard Hours (1967). His work is distinguished by its classical and mythological images, as in Millions of Strange Shadows (1977) and Venetian Vespers (1979), and later collections include The Transparent Man (1990), Flight Among the Tombs (1996), and The Darkness and the Light (2002). He taught at various institutions, notably Rochester University, NY (from 1967), and among his many awards was the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1968.
Anthony Evan Hecht, (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004), was an American poet.
Life
Hecht was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents. Hecht's parents were not happy at his plans and tried to discourage them;
In 1944, upon completing his final year at Bard, Hecht was drafted into the US 97th Infantry Division and was sent to the battlefields in Europe. On this day Hecht's division helped liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp, Hecht was ordered to interview French prisoners in the hope of gathering evidence on the camp's commanders. Years later, Hecht said of this experience, "The place, the suffering, the prisoners' accounts were beyond comprehension.
Career
After the war ended, Hecht took advantage of the G.I.
Hecht released his first collection, A Summoning of Stones, in 1954. Even at this stage Hecht's poetry was often compared with that of Auden, with whom Hecht had become friends in 1951 during a holiday on the Italian island of Ischia, where Auden spent each summer. In 1993 Hecht published, The Hidden Law, a critical reading of Auden's body of work. During his career Hecht won many fans, and prizes, including the Prix de Rome in 1951 and the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his second work The Hard Hours. It was within this volume that Hecht first addressed his own experiences of World War II - memories that had caused him to have a nervous breakdown in 1959. Hecht spent three months in hospital following his breakdown though was spared electric shock therapy, unlike Sylvia Plath, whom he had encountered whilst teaching at Smith College.
Hecht's main source of income was as a teacher of poetry, most notably at the University of Rochester where he taught from 1967 to 1985. Hecht won a number of notable literary awards including: the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for the volume The Hard Hours), the 1983 Bollingen Prize, the 1988 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 1997 Wallace Stevens Award, the 1999/2000 Frost Medal, and the Tanning Prize.
Hecht is also notably one of the inventors of the double dactyl, a form of light verse.
Bibliography
Poetry
A Summoning of Stones (1954) The Hard Hours (1968) The Venetian Vespers (1979) Flight Among the Tombs (1998) The Darkness and the Light (2001)Other Works
Obbligati: Essays in Criticism (1986) The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.
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