ROGER HECHT (1926-1990), who was Anthony Hecht's brother, is not read or known as much as he should be. During his lifetime he published five books of poetry: 27 Poems, Signposts, Parade of Ghosts, Burnt Offerings, and A Quarreling of Dust (a limited edition of his selected poems).
James Wright wrote, "Mr. Hecht's…book, Parade of Ghosts, which spans four centuries, is simultaneously a long poem and a sequence of single poems individually realized. The author disappears inside his own poems and there addresses himself, through a spare and precise diction, to the complex drama of certain characters who are at once their own highly individualized selves and the embodiment of critical moments of American history. It is odd-and oddly reassuring-to read a new work of poetry written by an adult and offered without compromise to adult readers."
I am Roger's literary executor and I hope you will enjoy the two poems printed below. Additional poems can be found on Roger's section at The Hypertexts Web Site:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/contents.htm
I would also like to offer Roger's books (all of which are remaindered and which I've been distributing over the last decade after his death) to Able Muse members and visitors for the low cost of packing & shipping. Book ordering details and other Roger Hecht information can be found at The Hypertexts Web Site as well as Able Muse's "General Announcements" forum.
Wade Newman
A DEAD YOUNG WOMAN
By Roger Hecht
She was so beautiful that men would stand
At the astonished edge of awe
And terrified of what they saw
As if they viewed a thing not real
Captured in flesh without a flaw.
Yet she was prisoned in the undermind.
Who would have recognized her had she lived?
For pain sealed fast upon her eyes
The stare of one who sometimes sees
But does not smile or cry or feel
Either the need of Paradise
Or the need of love and of being loved.
Waiting for nothing half a life long,
Nothing occurred. And so she died
Alone, motionless, petrified
By shadows she had made her meal.
Now there is nothing left to hide
In earth of one not ever old or young
But only beautiful and firm as the crust
Glazing a sickle hill of snow.
And men know no more than men can know
Of terror and of terror's zeal
To shred the figment night and fragment day.
Her loveliness was her own cost.
To know is to suffer. I would prefer
Never to have seen her laugh
Or fuss her hair or try to move
Away from phantoms of the real.
For memory prisons alive
Her ghost, but nothing, nothing like unto her.
Originally published in 27 Poems, Alan Swallow, 1966
Reprinted by permission of the author's literary estate.
A GLANCE
by Roger Hecht
A slow circling and unconcluding mind
Has been my aim. Beyond that, only song
With fancy language left behind
And left in me the stamp of right and wrong
Inherited from the Old Testament.
How much of what I've finished have I meant?
How often have I struck a music blind
And wondering, dumbfounded with consent,
Only to tell myself I meant that all along
And not once given thanks to accident
Which grants occasions that I say I find
Since I need to believe, when struck by song,
I am the player, not the instrument?
Originally published in Burnt Offerings, The Lightning Tree, 1979
Reprinted by permission of the author's literary estate
[This message has been edited by Wade Newman (edited June 24, 2001).]
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