Dear Katy
An interesting exercise is to read Clare’s journal in which he describes his journey out of Essex during those days and see in detail what Hecht made of Clare’s own words.
In this case Hecht acknowledges his source. When he does this kind of thing elsewhere, sometimes the source is concealed. In his last book, for instance, the first poem, “Late Afternoon: The Onslaught of Love”, is derived from the opening paragraphs of the third section of Chapter 3 of Flaubert’s
Emma Bovary. (I owe this insight to my friend, the poet Joe Harrison. – The original text can be found at this site:
http://abu.cnam.fr/cgi-bin/go?bovary3,3937 .)
Hecht, who in my view was a great poet, was often a considerably more complex and oblique than some of his admirers perhaps give him credit for.
Regards to all
Clive Watkins