Anybody read Anthony Hecht?

[twelveoone]

Speaking of tradition , sort of
just wondering...
Pulitzer Prize winner
Check him out Bog - you might like this classicist

 

[Angeline]

Speaking of tradition , sort of
just wondering...
Pulitzer Prize winner
Check him out Bog - you might like this classicist

Ever see this one? I think it's a hoot.

The Dover Bitch
by Anthony Hecht

A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

 

[bogusbrig]

Speaking of tradition , sort of
just wondering...
Pulitzer Prize winner
Check him out Bog - you might like this classicist

If I wasn't so sharp, I would say he is taking the piss but this is really really good stuff and should be taught in schools. We might then produce better poets.

And yes 1201. He definitely should be a Pulitzer Prize winner. Think of the improving influence on poetry such a winner would make.

 

[twelveoone]

If I wasn't so sharp, I would say he is taking the piss but this is really really good stuff and should be taught in schools. We might then produce better poets.

And yes 1201. He definitely should be a Pulitzer Prize winner. Think of the improving influence on poetry such a winner would make.

According to the Obit, he did,

 

[TheRainMan]

Speaking of tradition , sort of
just wondering...
Pulitzer Prize winner
Check him out Bog - you might like this classicist

Great stuff, that.

 

[Tzara]

Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht, Pulitzer Prize 1968.

 

[bogusbrig]

According to the Obit, he did,

Hmm I should have checked him out. He's funny. I'll have to see if his humour carries on in other work.

 

[twelveoone]

Hmm I should have checked him out. He's funny. I'll have to see if his humour carries on in other work.

I kind of saw him as a Sylvia Plath with balls (and humour). I have his "Collected Later Poems", nice woodcuts of deathheads, series of "Death" poems. Clint Eastwood meeting Dürer in Hell. (no kidding). Plus, whatever everybody else was doing, he was doinjg something else. I like this guy, almost as much as Eliot, not quite as funny though.