Anthony Hecht: Selections from Seven Decades of Correspondence

"I hope, fer Cry Sakes, that you have kept my entire correspondence on file so that in due course you can make a mint of money by publishing my letters, you lucky bastard." Anthony Hecht made this fanciful remark in a 1969 letter to his longtime friend and former Smith colleague, the architectural historian, William MacDonald. The mischievous gusto is characteristic of their epistolary exchange in particular and of many of Hecht's letters more generally. But in this case, his high spirits were perhaps inspired by recent events in the world of poetry. Hecht's second volume of verse, The Hard Hours (1967), long in process—his first book, The Summoning of Stones, appeared in 1954—had received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1968, and although the probability of making "a mint of money" from an author's correspondence could hardly have seemed more likely then than it does today, the bestowal of a prestigious award might momentarily at least encourage a hopeful glance at fortune.

Nothing came of Hecht's remark, of course. Even more to the point, Fortune had granted Hecht a good many more years of writing, during which time, among other activities, he would publish another five books of poetry: Millions of Strange Shadows (1977), The Venetian Vespers (1979), The Transparent Man (1990), Flight Among the Tombs (1996), and The Darkness and the Light (2001); write four substantial volumes of essays and criticism; produce a translation (with Helen Bacon) of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes; and along the way garner an enviable number of additional prizes dear to many poets.

So, too, his correspondence would continue to grow. 1969, to the year, in fact, marks the half-way point of what would turn out to be a capacious epistolary life covering seven decades of correspondence. Beginning in 1935, when Hecht first went away to summer camp at age twelve, his letter writing continued unabated until his death in October 2004. Initially, through to the early 1950s, most were written to his parents, who had the good sense to save much of what they received. But dovetailing with the later years of these family correspondences is an increasing number of letters addressed to, and about, an ever-widening circle of friends and acquaintances that Hecht made during his time at Bard College, then in the Army, then at Kenyon, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom, and then abroad again, in the process of entering the professional ranks of poet and teacher at what would turn out to be a goodly number of colleges and universities, including time spent as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1982–84. To date, over 4,000 letters (and post cards) of Hecht's have come to light. In their comprehensive variety, they allow for a much fuller, more nuanced, and indeed richer view of this "many-sided" poet—to borrow a term of praise from Richard Wilbur's "An Eightieth-Birthday Ballade for Anthony Hecht"—than was certainly imaginable in 1969. The present sampling represents a small composite of a much larger picture. Some are chosen for their simple (and sometimes complex) charm. His 1992 letter on the lark may show us nothing more than his dazzling descriptive abilities at work—how nothing is that? Other letters illuminate Hecht's early years. As a young soldier going off to Europe in the Second World War—already much commented on by critics, especially in relation to canonical poems like "More Light!, More Light!"—Hecht was also to be stationed in Japan, where his fascination with an exiled Nazi society and his appreciation for music come separately to the fore. I have included, too, several letters from the more spacious days following the war (exemplified in his letter of July 10, 1949) when he was traveling or staying in Europe with friends, and on his way, as it turned out, to being selected as the first Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome. During these ventures Hecht would further nurture a taste for European art and...