U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1982-1984
Anthony Hecht was born in New York City in 1923. He was the author of eight poetry collections, including A Summoning of Stones (1954), The Hard Hours (1967), and Collected Later Poems (2005). Hecht was also renowned for his criticism, most notably Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (2003). He received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the Loines Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award from the Poetry Foundation, and the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. He was appointed the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1982-1984. Hecht taught at the University of Rochester from 1967-1985, as well as at Smith and Bard Colleges and Harvard, Georgetown, and Yale Universities. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Anthony Hecht died in 2004.
Audio Recordings of Anthony Hecht
- As part of Poetry in English at the Library of Congress, Anthony Hecht reading his poems in the Recording Laboratory on October 25, 1982
- Anthony Hecht reading his poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, Oct. 4, 1982
- Anthony Hecht reading from his poetry in the Coolidge Auditorium, October 3, 1983
- The pathetic fallacy: Anthony Hecht delivering a lecture in the Coolidge Auditorium, May 7, 1984
- The Poet and the Poem: Anthony Hecht, Jan. 28, 1988