LATE ROMANCE

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.