The Hidden Law – The Poetry of W H Auden (Paper) - Softcover

Hecht, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674390075 ISBN 13: 9780674390072

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1994

Synopsis

In this text - the result of a life-long critical and imaginative engagement with Auden's works - Anthony Hecht identifies and traces consistent habits of thought and belief within the poet's extensive and varied writings and through his celebrated conversions and repudiations. Anthony Hecht is the author of six volumes of poetry, for which he has received the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize and the Prix de Rome, among other honours. He has served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress.

About this title

Review:

I know of no other instance of a poet of comparable mastery of his art and his experience taking up in such loving detail the work of a predecessor (and near contemporary). -- Richard Howard "Washington Post Book World" This is a book about poetry, about a poet who was dedicated to the art like few others of our time, whose poetic technique only another poet as gifted as Hecht could gloss...The richness of reference in this book to history, prosody, theology, poetry, punctuation, makes for a long swim in the heady liquor of poetry--not only Auden's poetry but that of the hundreds of authors whom Auden read...It is a pleasure to read. -- Peter Davison "Atlantic" "The Hidden Law"'s dispassionate critical voice unfolds a powerful meditation on the vicissitudes of the poetic life...It is at its most significant level a narrative of Anthony Hecht's emergence as a poet, and for all that the book tells us by implication, it takes its place alongside MacNeice's "Yeats" and Berryman's "Crane," -- Nicholas Jenkins "Times Literary Supplement"

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0674390075
• ISBN 13: 9780674390072
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496