Anthony Hecht was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents in 1923. As a freshman at Bard College in New York he discovered the works of Stevens, Auden, Eliot and Dylan Thomas and decided to become a poet. In 1944, after completing his final year at Bard, Hecht was drafted into the 97th Infantry Division as a rifleman and saw combat in Germany and Czechoslovakia. On 23 April, 1945, his division helped liberate the Flossenberg\/Buchenwald concentration camp. He later said of this experience<\/p>\n
The place, the suffering, the prisoners’ accounts were beyond comprehension. For years after I would wake shrieking. [Washington Post<\/em>, 22 October, 2004]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After the war ended Hecht was sent to Japan as a staff writer with Stars and Stripes<\/em>. He returned to the US in 1946 and studied at Kenyon College, Ohio where he met fellow poets Randall Jarrell<\/a>, Elizabeth Bishop and Allen Tate.<\/p>\n
His first collection of poems, A Summoning of Stones<\/em>, was published in 1954; his second, The Hard Hours<\/em>, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. It was in this volume that Hecht first visited his war-time experiences – experiences which had caused him to have a nervous breakdown in 1959.<\/p>\n
The often unsettling and horrific insights into the darkness of human nature told in limpid, flowing verse that characterize the poems in the collection would become Hecht\u2019s trademark. Poetry Foundation<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hecht taught at various institutions and between 1982 and 1984 was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He died on October 20, 2004.<\/p>\n
Anthony Hecht’s Poems<\/h3>\n
- “More Light! More Light!”<\/a><\/li>
- Anthony Hecht – The Poet’s View<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n
Resources for Anthony Hecht<\/h3>\n
Interview in the Paris Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anthony Hecht was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents in 1923. As a freshman at Bard College in New York he discovered the works of Stevens, Auden, Eliot and Dylan Thomas and decided to become a poet. In 1944, after completing his final year at Bard, Hecht was drafted into the 97th Infantry Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2322,"parent":35,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"template-poet-bio.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\t\n