RIP
RIP - Anthony Hecht is dead. Michael Dirda has a decent appreciation.
There were years when Hecht was my favorite living poet. The first time I met the man was in a small chain bookstore outlet I managed in an unobtrusively wealthy neighborhood of Washington, DC. I helped a grandfatherly-looking shabbily-dressed gentleman find summer reading list books (for his son, not his grandson), and then the man lay his Visa card on the counter. I stared at it, not speaking.
“Is there something wrong with that?” he asked.
“You’re Anthony Hecht,” I said.
“Yes, I am.”
I rang his sale, estimating the various kinds of fool I had made of myself with my quips about the books on his son’s list, and that was that. On later, more public occasions, I saw the version more familiar to those who follow poetry - dapper (often bow-tied), reserved, plum-voiced, a man who could tell you that chickens were the smallest fruit that grows on bushes and you would believe him for that authoritative baritone. In a common genre of memoir/appreciations I now tell you that each time he remembered me, and I imply or state outright that he singled me out as a uniquely welcome face in the crowd of the moment. None of that happened. But I heard him recite Auden’s “The Fall of Rome” from memory at a talk one time, which is more than I could have hoped for.
His great subject was political cruelty - “More Light! More Light!” is particularly unsparing - but he tapped yet deeper, colder sources too, as in “The Hill.” Though I doubt it goes that way, may it be for him now less like
I saw a piece of ribbon snagged on a hedge,
But no other sign of life. And then I heard
What seemed the crack of a rifle. A hunter, I guessed;
At least I was not alone. But just after that
Came the soft and papery crash
Of a great branch somewhere unseen falling to earth.
And that was all, except for the cold and silence
That promised to last forever, like the hill.
And more like the next lines:
Then prices came through, and fingers, and I was restored
To the sunlight and my friends.
Start with the selection at Plagiarist.com but don’t stop there. I am partial to “Third Avenue in Sunlight,” but, out of respect for the great themes of his work, must close by calling your attention to a late poem, “The Transparent Man.” Excerpt:
It’s like a sort of blizzard in the bloodstream,
A deep, severe, unseasonable winter,
Burying everything. The white blood cells
Multiply crazily and storm around,
Out of control. The chemotherapy
Hasn’t helped much, and it makes my hair fall out.
I know I look a sight, but I don’t care.
I care about fewer things; I’m more selective.
It’s got so I can’t even bring myself
To read through any of your books these days.
It’s partly weariness, and partly the fact
That I seem not to care much about the endings,
How things work out, or whether they even do.
What I do instead is sit here by this window
And look out at the trees across the way.
You wouldn’t think that was much, but let me tell you,
It keeps me quite intent and occupied.
Now all the leaves are down, you can see the spare,
Delicate structures of the sycamores,
The fine articulation of the beeches.
I have sat here for days studying them,
And I have only just begun to see
What it is that they resemble. One by one,
They stand there like magnificent enlargements
Of the vascular system of the human brain.
