Collected Earlier Poems (26 page)

14
“As through those gutters of which Swift once wrote”: “A Description of a City Shower,” Oct. 1710.

15
“I beheld new heavens, I beheld the earth made new” is an ironic echo of Isaiah 65:17—“For, behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” The blessedness of being allowed to forget the old and ruined life is clearly connected in this poem with getting drunk.

16
“Preserve these words,” a phrase which occurs both in Section VIII and Section X, is an echo of a Mandelstam poem, addressed and dedicated to Anna Akhmatova, which, in the translation by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin, begins, “Keep my words forever for their aftertaste of misfortune and smoke.”

17
“northern Sphinxes”: sculptured figures placed along the embankments of the Neva River in St. Petersburg.

A Note About the Author

A
NTHONY
H
ECHT
’s first book of poems,
A Summoning of Stones
, appeared in 1954. He is also the author of
The Hard Hours
, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968, of
Millions of Strange Shadows
, 1977, and of
The Venetian Vespers
, 1979, all included in
Collected Earlier Poems
(the first in selected form).
The Transparent Man
appeared in 1990, and his most recent,
Flight Among the Tombs
, in 1996. He is the translator (with Helen Bacon) of Aeschylus’
Seven Against Thebes
, 1973, and coeditor (with John Hollander) in 1967 of a volume of light verse,
Jiggery-Pokery
. A collection of his critical essays,
Obbligati
, was published in 1986. His study of the poetry of W. H. Auden,
The Hidden Law
, appeared in 1993, and his Mellon Lectures
On the Laws of the Poetic Art
in 1995. He has received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Librex-Guggenheim Eugenio Montale Award. He has taught widely, most recently as University Professor at Georgetown University, from which he recently retired.

POETRY

Flight Among the Tombs    1996

The Transparent Man    1990

Collected Earlier Poems    1990

The Venetian Vespers    1979

Millions of Strange Shadows    1977

The Hard Hours    1967

A Summoning of Stones    1954

TRANSLATION

Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes    1973
(
WITH HELEN BACON
)

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM

On the Laws of the Poetic Art    1995
(
ANDREW W. MELLON LECTURES IN THE FINE ARTS
)

The Hidden Law: the Poetry of W. H. Auden    1993

Obbligati    1986

EDITOR

Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls    1967
(
WITH JOHN HOLLANDER
)

The Essential George Herbert    1987