Divided into two parts, this new book contains a collaboration with the artist Leonard Baskin called "Presumptions of Death, " reproducing 22 masterly wood engravings and all of Hecht's other poems written since his last book, The Transparent Man.
ANTHONY HECHT, born in New York City in 1923, was the author of eight books of poetry, including The Hard Hours, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. He also wrote several volumes of essays and criticism, among them The Hidden Law, a book-length study of the poetry of W. H. Auden. Appointed poet laureate of the United States in 1982, his other honors included the Ruth B. Lilly Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Eugenio Montale Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the National Medal of Arts. He received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome; the Bogliasco, Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations; and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he died in 2004.
