Anthony Hecht (1923–2004)
Author of Collected Earlier Poems
About the Author
Image credit: My Poetic Side
Works by Anthony Hecht
Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) (2003) 52 copies
Seance for a Minyan: Ten Poems 3 copies
The Dover Bitch [poem] 2 copies
The Essential George Herbert 1 copy
Associated Works
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,473 copies, 9 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,015 copies, 7 reviews
For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most (1999) — Contributor — 480 copies, 4 reviews
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993) — Contributor — 377 copies, 2 reviews
Poems Bewitched and Haunted (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) (2005) — Contributor — 230 copies
Poetry Speaks Expanded: Hear Poets Read Their Own Work from Tennyson to Plath (2007) — Contributor — 158 copies, 2 reviews
The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings About Cats (1992) — Contributor — 112 copies, 1 review
Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature (2007) — Contributor — 95 copies, 2 reviews
A Controversy of Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, (1965) — Contributor — 83 copies
Sunlight on the River: Poems About Paintings, Paintings About Poems (2015) — Contributor — 11 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1923-01-16
- Date of death
- 2004-10-20
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Bard College
Kenyon College
Columbia University
University of Iowa
Horace Mann School - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature, 1970)
- Awards and honors
- Bollingen Prize (1983)
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1988)
Frost Medal (2000)
National Medal of Arts (2004)
Wallace Stevens Award (1997)
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1969) (show all 9)
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1982-1984)
Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (1969)
Aiken Taylor Award (1989) - Relationships
- Kerouac, Jack (classmate)
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Place of death
- Washington, D.C., USA
- Burial location
- Bard College Cemetery, Annandale-on-Hudon, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
I had intended to post on Naguib Mahfouz's Palace of Desire today, but it sometimes seems that we live in a brilliant, unpredictable universe. And one support for that impression is that David and I received in the mail from a friend of ours who is a big proponent doggerel verse, a package containing Anthony Hecht's and John Hollander's Jiggery Pokery: a Compendium of Double Dactyls. Previously familiar with Hecht only as the author of the Matthew Arnold satire "Dover Bitch," I was show more pleasantly and hilariously surprised to make his acquaintance and that of Hollander in such verses as the following (by Hollander):
Or this one (by Hecht):
Double dactyls have the following rules, as outlined by Hecht and Hollander (a dactyl, for those who don't know, is a three-syllable poetic foot with the first syllable stressed and the second two unstressed):
Hecht and Hollander also argue that any six-syllable word, once used in a double dactyl, can never be used in a different one, although Wikipedia maintains that only hardcore double-dactyl purists still hold to this requirement. This seems like a lot of rules, but once you start reading these little gems your brain begins to incorporate them almost unconsciously; the double-dactyl line is extremely catchy.
And in fact, between the uproarious Introduction, the delightfully tongue-in-cheek footnotes, and the addictive poems themselves, Jiggery Pokery unexpectedly comandeered my entire afternoon. Of course, the side effect of reading sing-song dactylic verse for hours at a time is that the meter gets horribly stuck in one's head, and one starts noticing double dactyls all over the house and in one's normal speech. In the shower I found myself chanting "Birch bark and chammomile, / Deep Cleansing Wash," and both David and I keep bursting out with examples of promising six-syllable words apropos of nothing in particular. ("Sesquicentennial!" "Homogeneity!") Needless to say, the next stage was to begin composing our own examples; also needless to say, mine were all about books.
I imagine "discontinuity" has already been used, by someone somewhere in a double dactyl, but I don't specifically remember it from the book. Here's one on my recent reading:
They are very addictive! And also surprisingly difficult. It's hard to find a good use for that single-word line when you have so few syllables to work with. Very fun, though. This last one is just about the dorkiest joke ever; the first time my friend Alan started talking about Austrian educational and agricultural innovator Rudolph Steiner (which Alan went through a phase of doing quite frequently), I mis-heard him with funny results.
HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
Higgledy-piggledy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third President,
Was, and, as such,
Served between Clevelands, and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncrasy,
Didn't do much.
Or this one (by Hecht):
FIRMNESS
Higgledy-piggledy
Mme. de Maintenon
Shouted, "Up yours!" when ap-
Proached for the rent,
And, in her anger, pro-
Ceeded to demonstrate,
Iconographically,
Just what she meant.
Double dactyls have the following rules, as outlined by Hecht and Hollander (a dactyl, for those who don't know, is a three-syllable poetic foot with the first syllable stressed and the second two unstressed):
- The poem is composed of two stanzas, each with three lines of two dactyls each followed by a fourth line that ends in a dactyl;
- The first line must be a double dactyl of nonsense language;
- The second line must be the name of the subject;
- The final lines of the two stanzas must rhyme;
- Somewhere in the second stanza there must be a line made up entirely of a single, double-dactylic word ("iconographically," for example).
Hecht and Hollander also argue that any six-syllable word, once used in a double dactyl, can never be used in a different one, although Wikipedia maintains that only hardcore double-dactyl purists still hold to this requirement. This seems like a lot of rules, but once you start reading these little gems your brain begins to incorporate them almost unconsciously; the double-dactyl line is extremely catchy.
And in fact, between the uproarious Introduction, the delightfully tongue-in-cheek footnotes, and the addictive poems themselves, Jiggery Pokery unexpectedly comandeered my entire afternoon. Of course, the side effect of reading sing-song dactylic verse for hours at a time is that the meter gets horribly stuck in one's head, and one starts noticing double dactyls all over the house and in one's normal speech. In the shower I found myself chanting "Birch bark and chammomile, / Deep Cleansing Wash," and both David and I keep bursting out with examples of promising six-syllable words apropos of nothing in particular. ("Sesquicentennial!" "Homogeneity!") Needless to say, the next stage was to begin composing our own examples; also needless to say, mine were all about books.
THE MOONSTONE
Fletteridge metteridge
Gabriel Betteridge
tells a romance with the
aid of Defoe;
The diamond's locational
Discontinuity's
somewhat assuaged by his
pipe and Bordeaux.
I imagine "discontinuity" has already been used, by someone somewhere in a double dactyl, but I don't specifically remember it from the book. Here's one on my recent reading:
MONTAIGNE
Hop-a-lide, pop-a-lide,
Mike of the Mountainside
'way from his wife, to his
tower confined,
Erstwhile Bordelais
Parliamentarian
Aired his opinions, and
then changed his mind.
They are very addictive! And also surprisingly difficult. It's hard to find a good use for that single-word line when you have so few syllables to work with. Very fun, though. This last one is just about the dorkiest joke ever; the first time my friend Alan started talking about Austrian educational and agricultural innovator Rudolph Steiner (which Alan went through a phase of doing quite frequently), I mis-heard him with funny results.
show less
RUDOLPH'S DINER
Old Donji Kraljevec,
Kingdom of Hungary,
Offers a breakfast that's
truly advanced:
All of the produce grown
Biodynamically;
Waldorf school day care on
hand for the staff.
There can be no doubt: Anthony Hecht writes gorgeous lines, metrically perfect and full of satisfying assonances. He’s erudite and witty and his poems positively brim over with wonderful vignettes: speculation about the true fish-founder of America (a cod or herring, no doubt); elegant musings upon Venetian dogshit; funny, meticulous renderings of off-season grand hotels and their fading habitués. The poetry rolls out like a brocade, with nary a pulled thread to slow the reader. The show more effect of the book is somewhat geological: the slow and steady impact of accumulated detail. Hecht’s sentences are nearly endless, his vocabulary lapidary, his images patiently unfurled, his gaze sly and mirthful.
Still, this book failed to ignite anything in me beyond admiration. The poems impress but do not move or surprise. It’s a strange thing – I chalk it up to a complete lack of palate cleansing in a book that has the intensity of a rich dessert. There’s no room, amidst the dense ornament of the poems, to consider the flavour of the imagery. In fact, there is so much of everything that almost nothing can make an impact or truly resonate. These poems are the opposite of spare or aphoristic. Deploying a syntax weighty with adjectives and layered with extra (though sometimes lovely) clauses, Hecht continually flirts with grandiloquence. Added to that, he occasionally (and annoyingly) comes off as smugly superior. His “Application for a Grant” sneers at bartenders, politicians and athletes (“their brains squeezed out through their pores”) before ending on a falsely modest note about the poet’s humble ambitions.
The Venetian Vespers is certainly an accomplished book, with wit, insight and flawlessly modulated cadence, and it is worth a read. For talent, Hecht deserves a higher rating, but for overall effect, I think three stars is fair. For readers who enjoy closely observed long poems, however, this book may rate higher. show less
Still, this book failed to ignite anything in me beyond admiration. The poems impress but do not move or surprise. It’s a strange thing – I chalk it up to a complete lack of palate cleansing in a book that has the intensity of a rich dessert. There’s no room, amidst the dense ornament of the poems, to consider the flavour of the imagery. In fact, there is so much of everything that almost nothing can make an impact or truly resonate. These poems are the opposite of spare or aphoristic. Deploying a syntax weighty with adjectives and layered with extra (though sometimes lovely) clauses, Hecht continually flirts with grandiloquence. Added to that, he occasionally (and annoyingly) comes off as smugly superior. His “Application for a Grant” sneers at bartenders, politicians and athletes (“their brains squeezed out through their pores”) before ending on a falsely modest note about the poet’s humble ambitions.
The Venetian Vespers is certainly an accomplished book, with wit, insight and flawlessly modulated cadence, and it is worth a read. For talent, Hecht deserves a higher rating, but for overall effect, I think three stars is fair. For readers who enjoy closely observed long poems, however, this book may rate higher. show less
Anthony Hecht is a very fine craftsman. Formally, his poems are inventive and carefully polished. Especially impressive is his accomplishment with somewhat complicated rhyme schemes, which frequently leads to sonic effects that are truly magical. This was his third collection in as many decades, and this demonstrates, if nothing else, a deep commitment to "getting it right". And yet, while I cannot help but admire his professional aesthetic, his wide scope of allusion, the comprehensive show more learning he demonstrates again and again, and his tonal range, I must say that relatively few of these poems stimulate what Vladimir Nabokov described as the "indescribable tingle of the spine" that signals the highest pleasure that literature has to offer. That said, Hecht does accomplish this on occasion, at least for me, in such poems as "Peripeteia", "The Lull", "A Birthday Poem", and, particularly, "Coming Home (from the journals of John Clare)". This is very far from a small achievement. show less
It's time for a comic break, don't you think?
Titus Andronicus
Mother Superior
Mr. America
Katherine Patterson
somebody’s Congressman
Abraham Lincoln (well,
almost)
What do these names, except Abe’s, have in common?
Eminence? Energy? Gravity? Potency?
Maybe. But that’s not what I had in mind.
They’re all double dactyls.
What’s a dactyl? Remember your introduction to poetics in tenth-grade English? A dactyl consists of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Each of the show more following words, by the way, is an example of a dactyl: eminence, energy, gravity, potency.
So a word that consists of two dactyls is a double dactyl. Get it? Like superintelligence, hyperacidity, pronounceability. A person’s name or designation may consist of a double dactyl. That’s what all the folks listed above have in common. Well, all except Abe, of course: ham would have to be unaccented to make his first name a dactyl, and a ham never likes to go unaccented; and Lincoln needs one more unaccented syllable, as in Lincolnesque, to make it the second part of a double dactyl.
But a double dactyl is also a poetic form. One that in the late 1960s got a lot of attention in USAmerican popular magazines, beginning with Esquire. Here’s an example. You’ll see how it relates to the words and names we’ve been looking at.
Jiggery-pokery
President Kennedy
Chose, in the White House,
A Canopied bed—
One that was used by his
Philoprogenitive
Grandfather Bobby and
Great-uncle Ted.
This is taken from what its editors at one time considered the legitimate canon of double-dactyls, Jiggery Pokery, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander (Atheneum, 1983). In fact, they gave it the subtitle, A Compendium of Double Dactyls.
Writing the introduction with tongue firmly in cheek and ironically but authoritatively emitting manifestations of their polysyllabic erudition, they spelled out some finer points of the history, rationale, and definition of the genre. For example, they predicted despondently, “Debates among future scholiasts about the heart of the matter may, alas, be all too easily envisaged—about whether the proper disposition of the syllables or the crucial face of the proper name in the second line constitutes the substance, essence, haeccity, quiddity, inscape or whatever of the whole genre.” (Yes, indeed!)
But they do deign to give one simple, clear definition of the form. Check it out against the example I’ve copied above.
“The form itself . . . is composed of two quatrains of which the last line of the first rhymes with the last line of the second. All the lines except the rhyming ones, which are truncated, are composed of two dactylic feet. The first line of the poem must be a double dactylic nonsense line, like ‘Higgledy-piggledy,’ or ‘Pocketa-pocketa’ . . . . The second line must be a double dactylic name. And then, somewhere in the poem, though preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the antepenultimate line, there must be at least one double dactylic line which is one word long (italicized for emphasis).”
The rest of the introduction consists of supercilious shenanigans about the development of and need for the genre with a ton of subtle and not-so-subtle allusions (as you might expect). Obviously, however, the two most difficult, and therefore delightful, features of the genre are (1) the double dactylic name and (2) the single line composed of one double dactylic word. Of course, these editors quibble with details. They would never have accepted “somebody’s Congressman,” for it is not a proper name, and they probably would have rejected both Mother Superior and Mr. America, as not referring to specific individuals (unless, of course, something else clever in the poem persuaded them to retain it). But even they occasionally took liberties: line 3 in the poem I quoted, by Hollander, is not double dactylic, the second foot being a two-syllable trochee or spondee, depending on your way of pronouncing it. But enough of their quibbles. Let me share one more of Hollander’s efforts. Notice how he makes a double dactyl of the two editors’ names by making them into one fictitious poet:
Higgledy-piggledy
Anthony Hollander,
Two-bards-in-one, worked their
Brains to a storm,
Seeking out words for the
Antepenultimate
Line of this dismally
Difficult form.
I discovered the form, not in this book, but when it first began to be published in 1966. I was asked by my department chair to substitute-teach for him in his high-school class in creative writing. Because he was much more interested in fiction and other prose forms than in poetry and because he knew of my interest in the latter, he asked me to help teach a week or so of that unit. Because he preferred traditional poetry to modern poetry and formal verse to free verse, I was asked to introduce a new form each day and guide the students in giving each of them a try; for example, the heroic couplet, villanelle, terza rima, ottava rima, sestina, sonnet, and the like. Personally, I prefer to teach poetic forms in exactly the opposite way, beginning with “found” poems and imagistic free forms, proceeding into formal types with syllabic genres, such as haiku and hexagrams. Of course, I followed my department chair’s instructions, but I began the exercises with the double dactyl. These were bright and creative kids, so we were off and running.
Theodore Roosevelt
rose at his century’s
outset and dauntlessly
enacted reforms
Relative Franklin D.
biogenetic’ly
outdistanced his uncle,
winning four terms.
(OK, so I permitted casual pronunciation and consonantal half rhymes; we free versifiers do that.)
I wish I could remember which double dactyls I used with the class to inspire their enthusiasm. Probably my favorite from this book, one by E. William Seaman, appears only in a footnote:
Higgledy-piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,
Finally answered with
Oversimplicity,
“Here’s my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!” show less
Titus Andronicus
Mother Superior
Mr. America
Katherine Patterson
somebody’s Congressman
Abraham Lincoln (well,
almost)
What do these names, except Abe’s, have in common?
Eminence? Energy? Gravity? Potency?
Maybe. But that’s not what I had in mind.
They’re all double dactyls.
What’s a dactyl? Remember your introduction to poetics in tenth-grade English? A dactyl consists of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Each of the show more following words, by the way, is an example of a dactyl: eminence, energy, gravity, potency.
So a word that consists of two dactyls is a double dactyl. Get it? Like superintelligence, hyperacidity, pronounceability. A person’s name or designation may consist of a double dactyl. That’s what all the folks listed above have in common. Well, all except Abe, of course: ham would have to be unaccented to make his first name a dactyl, and a ham never likes to go unaccented; and Lincoln needs one more unaccented syllable, as in Lincolnesque, to make it the second part of a double dactyl.
But a double dactyl is also a poetic form. One that in the late 1960s got a lot of attention in USAmerican popular magazines, beginning with Esquire. Here’s an example. You’ll see how it relates to the words and names we’ve been looking at.
Jiggery-pokery
President Kennedy
Chose, in the White House,
A Canopied bed—
One that was used by his
Philoprogenitive
Grandfather Bobby and
Great-uncle Ted.
This is taken from what its editors at one time considered the legitimate canon of double-dactyls, Jiggery Pokery, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander (Atheneum, 1983). In fact, they gave it the subtitle, A Compendium of Double Dactyls.
Writing the introduction with tongue firmly in cheek and ironically but authoritatively emitting manifestations of their polysyllabic erudition, they spelled out some finer points of the history, rationale, and definition of the genre. For example, they predicted despondently, “Debates among future scholiasts about the heart of the matter may, alas, be all too easily envisaged—about whether the proper disposition of the syllables or the crucial face of the proper name in the second line constitutes the substance, essence, haeccity, quiddity, inscape or whatever of the whole genre.” (Yes, indeed!)
But they do deign to give one simple, clear definition of the form. Check it out against the example I’ve copied above.
“The form itself . . . is composed of two quatrains of which the last line of the first rhymes with the last line of the second. All the lines except the rhyming ones, which are truncated, are composed of two dactylic feet. The first line of the poem must be a double dactylic nonsense line, like ‘Higgledy-piggledy,’ or ‘Pocketa-pocketa’ . . . . The second line must be a double dactylic name. And then, somewhere in the poem, though preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the antepenultimate line, there must be at least one double dactylic line which is one word long (italicized for emphasis).”
The rest of the introduction consists of supercilious shenanigans about the development of and need for the genre with a ton of subtle and not-so-subtle allusions (as you might expect). Obviously, however, the two most difficult, and therefore delightful, features of the genre are (1) the double dactylic name and (2) the single line composed of one double dactylic word. Of course, these editors quibble with details. They would never have accepted “somebody’s Congressman,” for it is not a proper name, and they probably would have rejected both Mother Superior and Mr. America, as not referring to specific individuals (unless, of course, something else clever in the poem persuaded them to retain it). But even they occasionally took liberties: line 3 in the poem I quoted, by Hollander, is not double dactylic, the second foot being a two-syllable trochee or spondee, depending on your way of pronouncing it. But enough of their quibbles. Let me share one more of Hollander’s efforts. Notice how he makes a double dactyl of the two editors’ names by making them into one fictitious poet:
Higgledy-piggledy
Anthony Hollander,
Two-bards-in-one, worked their
Brains to a storm,
Seeking out words for the
Antepenultimate
Line of this dismally
Difficult form.
I discovered the form, not in this book, but when it first began to be published in 1966. I was asked by my department chair to substitute-teach for him in his high-school class in creative writing. Because he was much more interested in fiction and other prose forms than in poetry and because he knew of my interest in the latter, he asked me to help teach a week or so of that unit. Because he preferred traditional poetry to modern poetry and formal verse to free verse, I was asked to introduce a new form each day and guide the students in giving each of them a try; for example, the heroic couplet, villanelle, terza rima, ottava rima, sestina, sonnet, and the like. Personally, I prefer to teach poetic forms in exactly the opposite way, beginning with “found” poems and imagistic free forms, proceeding into formal types with syllabic genres, such as haiku and hexagrams. Of course, I followed my department chair’s instructions, but I began the exercises with the double dactyl. These were bright and creative kids, so we were off and running.
Theodore Roosevelt
rose at his century’s
outset and dauntlessly
enacted reforms
Relative Franklin D.
biogenetic’ly
outdistanced his uncle,
winning four terms.
(OK, so I permitted casual pronunciation and consonantal half rhymes; we free versifiers do that.)
I wish I could remember which double dactyls I used with the class to inspire their enthusiasm. Probably my favorite from this book, one by E. William Seaman, appears only in a footnote:
Higgledy-piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,
Finally answered with
Oversimplicity,
“Here’s my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!” show less
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