The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden - Softcover

Hecht, Anthony

4.67

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780674390072: The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674390075 ISBN 13: 9780674390072

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1994

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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.

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From Library Journal:

Hecht, a recognized authority on Auden and one of our finest poets and critics ( The Transparent Man, LJ 6/15/90; Obbligati, LJ 8/86) , here offers a superbly crafted paean to Auden's poetry. He reads Auden's poems chronologically in order to demonstrate the relationship between Auden's life and art. Such readings not only reveal prominent motifs and themes--the notion of art as frivolity, the idea of heroism, the dichotomy of public world/private self, the centrality of language, the Hidden Law, a kind of poetic justice that governs literature and life--but also demonstrate influences on Auden, which included Kierkegaard, Rimbaud, Eliot, and Hardy. One wishes that Hecht had done a better job of citing his sources, but this is a minor weakness given the insights he generates from his readings of "New Year Letter" and "For the Time Being." The respect for Auden's art, evident in Hecht's lucid prose and gracious readings, makes this book a fine introduction to Auden's work. Highly recommended.
- Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

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)

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)

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)

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