Late Romance: Anthony Hecht-A Poet's Life

by David Yezzi

Overview

Anthony Hecht (1923-2004) was one of America’s greatest poets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and widely recognized as a master of formal verse that drew on wide-ranging cultural and literary sources, as well as Hecht’s experiences as a soldier during World War II, during which he fought in Germany and Czechoslovakia and helped to liberate the Flossenburg concentration camp.

In Late Romance, David Yezzi—himself a renowned poet and critic—reveals the depths that informed the meticulous surfaces of Hecht’s poems. Born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in Manhattan, Hecht saw his father lose nearly everything during the stock market crash of 1929. He grew into an accomplished athlete, actor, writer, and eventually a soldier in the crucible that consumed the world. Returning from the war, Hecht struggled to reconcile what he had witnessed and experienced, suffering from mental illness that required hospitalization. But he found the means to channel his emotions into poetry of lasting meaning, control, and depth; along with Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Theodore Roethke, and Elizabeth Bishop, Hecht remains a vital presence in letters.

Published to celebrate the 100th year of his birth, and to coincide with an edition of his collected poems (to be published by Knopf), Late Romance is the definitive, dramatic biography of a uniquely-gifted writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250016584
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	346,746
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

DAVID YEZZI is a poet, playwright, editor, and teacher. His books of poetry include Black Sea and More Things in Heaven. He is the editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, wrote the verse play Schnauzer, produced by The Baltimore Poets Theater, and wrote the libretto for David Conte’s opera Firebird Motel. A former director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City, he now teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and lives in Baltimore.

Editorial Reviews

09/11/2023

Yezzi (More Things in Heaven) delivers an affectionate and meticulous biography of fellow poet Anthony Hecht (1923–2004). Beginning with Hecht’s childhood in a wealthy German Jewish enclave on New York’s Upper East Side, Yezzi details his subject’s formative years as a budding poet at Bard College and the horrors he witnessed fighting in WWII, including when he took part in the liberation of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Tracing the development of Hecht’s style, Yezzi explains that during Hecht’s studies as a non-matriculating “special student” at Kenyon College after the war, he adopted mentor John Crowe Ransom’s “Eliotic impersonality,” which sought to disguise autobiographical elements and consider them as if at a remove. The period from 1967 to 1971 was transformative for Hecht, Yezzi suggests, describing how during that time Hecht won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hard Hours, which “bolstered his reputation and career,” and married his former student, Helen D’Alessandro, a book editor who offered him reprieve from his “periods of melancholy.” Yezzi provides astute analysis of how Hecht’s life influenced his poetry—noting that “Aubade,” one of his last poems, was inspired by his contemplation of “the anguish his death would cause” Helen—and the careful research, drawn from Hecht’s archives and letters and interviews with his friends, brings the poet to vivid life. This will stand as the definitive account of an influential American poet. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Yezzi’s intimate knowledge of Hecht’s poetry informs a sympathetic, authoritative portrait. An artful, well-informed biography." - Kirkus starred review

"[A]n affectionate and meticulous biography... careful research, drawn from Hecht’s archives and letters and interviews with his friends, brings the poet to vivid life. This will stand as the definitive account of an influential American poet." - Publishers Weekly

"Now that almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Hecht died, the moment to recognize and come to terms with his achievements as a poet and critic might finally be upon us, and if it is—and I pray it is; we need the examples of great poets perhaps more than ever now, as we begin to forget the importance of both great poets and good poets—David Yezzi’s Late Romance will be the book that guides our considerations. It is a biography beyond which no further biography of Hecht need be written; it is comprehensive, judicious, insightful, and beautifully written, and I can’t wait to read it again."
—Shane McCrae, Whiting Award winning author of The Gilded Auction Block and Sometimes I Never Suffered

"David Yezzi’s biography of Anthony Hecht charts the complex life and haunted imagination of a brilliant poet. Yezzi’s account of Hecht’s experiences as a soldier in World War Two is especially moving and greatly deepens our understanding of Hecht's work. Late Romance is a book about a life dedicated to art, but it is also an essential exploration of the wider world of American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century, with superb portraits of figures such as Auden and Wilbur and Sexton."
—Colm Tóibín, author of The Master and Brooklyn

"How do poems come into being? David Yezzi honors that mystery, but by tracking closely the poet’s life, he invites us deep into Hecht’s darkling, grimly masterful poems. From an affluent but miserable childhood, through shocking experiences as a soldier in Germany in World War II and the liberation of the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, and then the vicissitudes of PTSD, a wretched first marriage, and depression, Hecht forged an oeuvre of severe and enduring authority, and, finally, a testimonial of love and joy. Yezzi is Hecht’s ideal reader and narrator."
—Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

"This is a moving, fine-grained telling, in one American life, of a great, repeated and essential story: the transformation by—and in some measure of—an art."
—Robert Pinsky, author of Gulf Music and At the Foundling Hospital

From the Publisher

★ 2023-09-01
Chronicle of an acclaimed poet.

Yezzi, a poet, playwright, and editor of the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, makes his debut as a biographer with a sensitive, comprehensive study of Anthony Hecht (1923-2004), former poet laureate of the U.S. and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and many other honors. Hecht was born in New York City to a wealthy family of non-observant Jews. While his brother, whose infirmities included epilepsy and partial paralysis, drew all the family’s attention, Hecht grew up feeling “solitary, adrift.” He attended tony schools but was a desultory student. Only in 1940, when he landed at Bard College, did he begin to thrive. The war intervened, though, and he enlisted in the Reserve Corps. Accepted into the Army Specialized Training Program, he was sent to Carleton College to learn German in preparation for translating. When the program was discontinued, he was thrown into the infantry, and his wartime experiences marked him forever. Although he never killed anyone, he emerged with an “excruciating sense of moral compromise” and PTSD. On the GI Bill, he enrolled at Kenyon College, where John Crowe Ransom was his academic adviser. The Ransom circle “became his literary home base, a place of belonging from which to begin writing in earnest.” Yezzi engagingly traces Hecht’s growing reputation; friendships with a host of literary stars, including Saul Bellow, Anne Sexton, James Merrill, Joseph Brodsky, Leonard Baskin, and W.H. Auden; his coveted awards; and his teaching career at Bard, Smith, Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Rochester, where he was “the star of the English department.” His personal life at times was volatile—he was prone to depression and suffered breakdowns; his first marriage ended in divorce. His second, though, proved a source of lasting happiness. Yezzi’s intimate knowledge of Hecht’s poetry informs a sympathetic, authoritative portrait.

An artful, well-informed biography.

Kirkus Reviews