The Poetry of Anthony Hecht John Harris

1 Lending “A Shape to Water”: The Poetry of Anthony Hecht John Harris Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2017 School of Culture and Communication The University of Melbourne 2 Abstract Elegance and style are the most commonly recognised hallmarks of Anthony Hecht’s poetry. This thesis argues that Hecht’s poetry offers more than those features. Elegance is balanced in equal measure by the subject matter of his poetic inquiries, which both enlighten and inform readers. This subsequent balance creates poems of considerable contemporary significance. These poems ask questions that reshape our understanding of theodicy. Hecht’s writing allows us the possibility of hope not in finding answers, but in the continued determination to search for them. He is a poet who (within his own writing style) innovates: revivifying dramatic monologues that deploy imagined characters who explore and ask questions of our human purpose. His lyrical poems are written with imagination, drama and are, in Horace’s term, infused with delight. Through a study of these three aspects of Hecht’s extant work, this thesis makes a further contribution to our understanding of the delicate balance required between Horatian dulce and our continued inquiry into what it is to be human, that is essential in the work of poetry. 3 Declarations This is to certify that: 1. This thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated. 2. Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used. 3. This thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length. 4 Acknowledgements To Elizabeth Harris. Without her, I would not have been able to complete this work. To my children John, David and Claudia, who were patient, kind and interested. The staff and students of Ormond College, particularly Jack Armstrong. Their practical and emotional support has been extraordinary. My supervisors, Professor Emeritus Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Professor John Frow who were patient, exacting and generous in their comments. Finally, Professor Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor, The University of Melbourne, who suggested that writing this thesis might be a good idea. 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………4 Chapter One: Introduction and Literature review…………………………………..……….6 Chapter Two: Hecht’s Poetic Genesis…………………………………………………………… 35 Chapter Three: Hecht the Theologian …………………………………………………………..85 Chapter Four: Explorations in Dramatic Character……………………………………….145 Chapter Five: Anthony Hecht: The Lyrical master………………………………….…….199 Chapter Six: Conclusion…………………………………………………..…………………………..233 Bibliography………………………………………………………………….……………………………..239 6 Chapter One Introduction Anthony Hecht’s Poetry: Lending “a shape to water.” Horace claims that poetry should add to our understanding of life and delight us: Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae. Quicquid praecipies, esto breuis, ut cito dicta percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles. Omne superuacuum pleno de pectore manat. Ficta voluptatis causa sint proxima veris1 (Horace 333) Horace’s advice is deceptively simple. He urges poets to inform, to bring fresh insight, revealing for the reader some perspective on our human condition, if not unspoken before, certainly in a way that reveals new understanding eudaemonically. Such insight cannot be divorced from delight or pleasure as they are integral to the poet’s particular revelation. What is left unsaid is whether Horace means that this enjoyment may be derived from the subject, as well as from its composition. Both are required but, even if the subject matter is not joyful, pleasure can be derived from the insight the poem brings to its topic and from the dexterity with which language is employed. Relevance to life matters to Horace. That is how the listener or reader remains engaged. Horace warns against abundance without purpose or immediacy, as words matter and should not be used casually in poetry. Delight brings pleasure, but poetic expression must be wedded to informing our life. For Horace, poetry reveals and provides insight or understanding of how things are. For him, this insight is realised by achieving a balance between what and how a poet speaks. 1 The aim of the poet is to inform or delight; to combine both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and hold it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction was invented in order to please, and should remain close to reality. 7 It was William Matthews’ contribution to The Burdens of Formality: Essays on the Poetry of Anthony Hecht (1989), on Horace’s influence in Hecht’s work, that alerted me to the balance between Hecht’s virtuosity, his subject matter and this exhortation by Horace which I have used to set the lens for this thesis. Matthews argues that Hecht’s work is at its best when there is a balance between “at one extreme, a merely pyrotechnical art and, at the other, an obdurate thing so powerful that it beggars not only art but also the will to speak at all” (Matthews 157). Before embarking further, though, I am cautioned about adopting a single focus. In The Hidden Law (1993), Hecht says he was reluctant to approach any collection of poetry with a prior agenda: … all too often critical inquiries apply Procrustean methods, lopping off something here by cunning omission, labouring a point too heavily there, all on behalf of an a priori thesis to which the poet and his work are tortured into conformity. (Hidden Law 438). For this reason, not all of Hecht’s work is considered.2 My focus does not provide a holistic definition of his contribution to poetry. Rather, I have chosen to consider particular elements of his work. First, I lay out the genesis of Hecht’s style. I then proceed to map out the evident refashioning of his poetic heritage, tracing his style’s development through three key concerns evident from his first collection to his last. I demonstrate how Hecht’s approach altered over time through exploring these concerns. This inquiry will show the importance of the balance struck between the rich insights Hecht brings to the subjects he writes about, a command of poetic forms and an elegance in language that has rarely been matched. I test these claims through a close reading of Antony Hecht’s poetry, concluding that his poetry achieves a balance between “superfluous words” and an “applicability to life” for the current era. 2 The long poem, “The Venetian Vespers” for example, which is covered by Ricks in True Friendship (75-77) and Nims, in ‘“The Venetian Vespers”’ (120-144) and in Post’s A Thickness of Particulars (2015). 8 I have chosen to consider recurring themes in Hecht’s work, which were realised initially through writing in the New Critical style of Tate and Ransom, in the influence of George Santayana’s poetic theory and the poetry of Donne and Herbert, but later refashioned, making his inquiries into moral evil, human weakness and experience emerge in fresh, dramatic language. In exploring these themes, this thesis will extend the breadth of our understanding of his poetry, while acknowledging and responding to criticisms of the limitations of his formal approach. This question of balance is a contemporary issue and therefore relevant to a consideration of Hecht’s work. Jonathan F. S. Post, in his recently published book on Hecht’s poetry, A Thickness of Particulars: The Poetry of Anthony Hecht, says on the one hand, that Hecht had a continued concern with formality in poetry, particularly in “the process of composition itself…in which an idea is a coaxed into being by certain laws…yielding verse of a beautifully firm but flexible order” (14). My title of this thesis stems from a line in one of Hecht’s poems, “The Plastic and the Poetic Form”, which addresses the role formality may have in making a particular poem work. However he also adds that there remains “a creative tension at the heart of Classical Rhetoric: that while it valued the commonality of experience as poetry’s subject, it understood that strangeness is often what dazzles and transports the listener” (Post A Thickness of Particulars xii).3 Hecht’s acknowledged gift for dazzling words, prima facie, favours one side of this tension but may produce an imbalance. Post adds that his work on Hecht will hopefully “initiate or otherwise stimulate a critical conversation” on such matters as the balance between rhetoric and human experience in Hecht’s work (xii). I propose to do just that, making deeper inquiries into the way the “tension” or balance works in some dominant themes in his poetry.4 To “lend shape to water” may also mean getting this essential balance right. 3 By “rhetoric” I take Post to mean that we should focus on that aspect of it now described as poetry. Also, I note he speaks of listening and would suggest that the same may be said of readers of the poems: who also are listeners. 4 Post’s book follows on from his earlier publication The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht (2012). His book is, along with Hecht’s interview with Philip Hoy entitled Anthony Hecht: In Conversation with Philip Hoy, the most comprehensive resource on Hecht’s poetry post-1990. Along with Post and Hoy’s contributions, there has been further interest with the publication of Ricks’s True Friendship. All these contributions will be referred to later in the thesis. 9 Post also notes that comprehensive interest in Hecht’s later work waned after 1989 (Post "Early Anthony" 205). Much of the pre-1990 critical analysis has a focus on Hecht’s urbane style, in particular, The Hard Hours (1967).

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