Anthony Hecht The Darkness and the Light.
Garrett, Daniel
New York. Knopf. 2001. 67 pages $23. ISSN 0-375-41194-1
THE DARKNESS AND THE L]GHT is a volume of poetry that seems not of
this moment--it contains "beauty" and seems lofty in ways that
might be considered old-fashioned or classic, depending on one's
sympathies. "Shall a mere shepherd provide the cure of kings?"
asks his "Saul and David." "Who can resist the charms of
retrospection?" concludes "Lot's Wife." "The
past is past; it's no good to anyone," says
"Miriam," whose brothers (presumably Moses and Aaron) have
"managed to corner all the attention." This is poetry with
references biblical, cultural, and personal, and it provides moments of
wisdom, elegance, humor, and even vulgarity.
Anthony Hecht is a very good poet. There are poets one seems to
need in order to live, but I am not sure that Hecht is one. The most
interesting artists give us not only new situations and objects to look
at but, more importantly, new ways of seeing. Yet, who hasn't
wondered if the power of art isn't a false power, a power merely of
fantasy and moods rather than a penetrating and transforming power?
The Darkness and the Light is the latest work in a distinguished
career, following Flight Among the Tombs (1996; see WLT 71:3, P. 594)
and The Transparent Man (1990). Hecht received a Pulitzer Prize for his
book The Hard Hours (1967), and he has received other honors, among them
the Eugenio Montale Award and the Robert Frost Medal. In his career,
Hecht has taken as his themes the permanence of art and the impermanence of life, the world as both good and bad, the persistence and
unpredictability of evil, the individual's relation to society and
nature, the constancy of sexuality, the increasing presence of machinery
and technology in civilization, history, war, religion, mythology, how
ideas can possess us into betraying the potential of our lives, the
impact of crude prejudice regarding Judaism, and the value of family--of
a wife and children.
In the first poem in The Darkness and the Light, a mundane scene of
a local shipyard is described and contrasted with international art and
nature as a young couple takes a small boat out, with nature and love
seeming superior to all. (Yet air and water show industrial traces,
pollution.) It is a thoughtful theme, and there are other poems in the
book like it. Hecht's diction is showy, as in the phrases
"entertainments of despair" ("Haman"),
"barbarous thistles of frost" ("A Certain Slant"),
and the words/objects "croquembouches,"
"arquebuses," and "fruitwood bows" ("A Brief
Account of Our City"). His sudden turns toward the real can be
awkward and nasty, as in the mention of "aqueous lives" in a
slop pail ("A Certain Slant"). However, the poems I like best
in the collection have both natural ease and reach, such as
"Lapidary Inscription with Explanatory Note," consisting of
scathing remarks made after the death of an unliked person, "The
Ceremony of Innocence," a simple narrative about the execution of
the wrong man that leads one executioner to piety, and
"Elders," about a lust begun in youth that continues into old
age. It is hard not to conclude that in his embodiment of civilization
alone, a task the best poets undertake, Hecht is an important poet.
Daniel Garrett
Queens, N.Y.
