Volume 51, Number 19 · December 2, 2004
Anthony Hecht (1923–2004)
By Brad Leithauser
I caught my final glimpses of Anthony Hecht in Tennessee last July. This was at the Sewanee Writers Conference, where he was a guest of honor. I was one of a panel of five writers and editors come to pay tribute. Each panel member was to present a brief talk about Hecht's work. It was a task turned all the more imposing by having the object of our remarks, the eighty-one-year-old poet himself, seated in the audience. The look he trained upon us was—to my eyes—neither encouraging nor censorious but simply, deeply thoughtful. Though Hecht had as healthy an appetite for acclaim as most writers, he was typically far less tolerant than most of 'damned nonsense'—a favorite phrase of his. The shared sentiment on the panel was that observations had better be defensible and all facts correct.
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