The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht

Brief Chronology

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY 1923 Anthony Evan Hecht is born in New York City, on January 16, to Melvyn Hahlo Hecht (1893–1978) and Dorothea Grace Holzman (1894–1979). 1926 Brother Roger is born. 1927–1940 Attends the Dalton School (1927–1930), the Collegiate School in Manhattan (1930–1936), and the Horace Mann School for Boys in Riverdale. 1935–1939 Spends summers at Camp Kennebec, Maine. 1940–1943 Attends Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. 1943–1946 Serves in U.S. Army in the 386th Infantry Regiment, C Company , 3rd Platoon. Sees action on the German front, April 1945; stationed in Japan in fall–winter 1946. Discharged from the army on March 12, 1946. 1946–1947 Attends Kenyon College as a “special student,” where he studies with John Crowe Ransom. 1947–1948 Briefly attends University of Iowa; has nervous breakdown in the fall but returns after Christmas to finish out the academic year. Meets Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, and Flannery O’Connor. 1948 Attends Kenyon School of English in summer, where he studies with William Empson, F. O. Matthiessen, and Austin Warren. Studies privately with Allen Tate in New York City. 1949 Spends summer traveling in France and Italy; enters Columbia University as candidate for a master’s degree in English literature. 1950 Receives M.A. from Columbia University. Returns in summer to Europe; in fall moves to Ischia, where he will meet W. H. Auden. xxi xxii Brief Chronology 1951 May: awarded the first Rome Fellowship in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Begins year-long fellowship in October. 1952–1954 Instructor, Bard College; colleagues include Saul Bellow, Irma Brandeis, and Henrich Blücher (whose wife Hannah Arendt also became a friend). 1954 Hecht’s first book of poems, A Summoning of Stones, is published by Macmillan. 1954–1955 Marries Patricia Anne Harris, February 27. Returns in the fall of 1954 to the American Academy in Rome on Guggenheim Fellowship. 1956–1962 Teaches at Smith College, first as an instructor, then as an assistant professor, with several years off for fellowships: a second Guggenheim, a Hudson Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Meets Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Daniel Aaron, Leonard Baskin, and Helen Bacon. 1956 Son Jason is born. 1958 Son Adam is born. 1959 Files for legal separation from Patricia Harris in August. 1961 Divorce is finalized. Meets and begins corresponding with the poet Anne Sexton. Hospitalized for depression. 1962–1966 Returns to Bard College as an associate professor; then professor. 1967 Publishes The Hard Hours (Atheneum), and with John Hollander , Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (Atheneum). Moves to the University of Rochester as a professor of English, where he will remain on the faculty until 1985. 1968 Receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Hard Hours, and also the Russell Loines Award, presented by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Miles Poetry Prize. Named John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry at the University of Rochester. On leave at the American Academy in Rome, translating Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes with Helen Bacon. 1970 Awarded honorary degree by Bard; elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Brief Chronology xxiii 1971 Appointed a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; served until 1995. Marries Helen D’Alessandro, June 12. 1972 Son Evan Alexander is born. 1973 Visiting professor, Harvard University. Seven Against Thebes (Oxford). 1975 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science. 1977 Visiting professor, Yale University. Millions of Strange Shadows (Atheneum). 1979 The Venetian Vespers (Atheneum). 1981 Receives honorary degree from Georgetown University. 1982–1984 Named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. 1983 Shares with John Hollander the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. 1984 Receives the Librex-Guggenheim Eugenio Montale Award for Poetry. 1985–1993 Named University Professor at Georgetown University. 1986 Obbligati: Essays in Criticism (Atheneum). 1987 Honorary degree from University of Rochester. Receives Harriet Monroe Award by Poetry magazine. 1988 Awarded the Ruth B. Lilly Poetry Prize by Poetry magazine. 1989 Receives the Aiken-Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry by the University of the South. 1990 The Transparent Man (Knopf); Collected Earlier Poems (Knopf). Roger Hecht dies. 1992 Delivers the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1993 The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden (Harvard). Retires from teaching at Georgetown University. 1995 On the Laws of...