Lending "A shape to water": the poetry of Anthony Hecht

© 2017 Dr. John Michael HarrisElegance 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