Collected Later Poems

Meer over het boek

Anthony Hecht, now in his eightieth year, has earned a place alongside such poets as W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Bishop. Here under one cover are his three most recent collections–<i>The Transparent Man, Flight Among the Tombs, </i>and<i> The Darkness and the Light</i>. The perfect companion to his <i>Collected Earlier Poems </i>(continuously in print since 1990), this book brings the eloquent sound of Hecht's music to bear on a wide variety of human dramas: from a young woman dying of leukemia to the tangled love affairs of <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream;</i> from Death as the director of Hollywood films to the unexpected image of Marcel Proust as a figure skater. He glides with a gaining confidence, inscribes Tentative passages, thinks again, backtracks, Comes to a minute point, Then wheels about in widening sweeps and lobes, Large Palmer cursives and smooth <i>entrelacs, </i>Preoccupied, intent On a subtle, long-drawn style and pliant script Incised with twin steel blades and qualified Perfectly to express, With arms flung wide or gloved hands firmly gripped Behind his back, attentively, clear-eyed, A glancing happiness.<p>About the Author: Anthony Hecht is the author of seven books of poetry, including <i>The Hard Hours,</i> which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. He is also the author of several volumes of essays and criticism, among them a book-length study of the poetry of W. H. Auden called <i>The Hidden Law</i>. He has received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1983), the Eugenio Montale Award (1984), the Wallace Stevens Award (1997), and the Robert Frost Medal (2000). He is a member of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.</p>