Divided into two parts, this new book contains a collaboration with the artist Leonard Baskin called "Presumptions of Death, " reproducing 22 masterly wood engravings and all of Hecht's other poems written since his last book, The Transparent Man.
Anthony Hecht's first book of poems, A Summoning of Stones, appeared in 1954. It was followed by The Hard Hours, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. Millions of Strange Shadows was published in 1977, and The Venetian Vespers in 1979. The last three titles, together with the author's selection from the first book was published in 1990 as Collected Earlier Poems, together with a new book, The Transparent Man. He is the author also of a book of critical essays, , 1986; The Hidden Law, 1993, his study of the poetry of W.H. Auden; and On the Laws of the Poetic Art, 1995, the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, delivered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1992. He has taught widely, most recently as University Professor in the Graduate School of Georgetown University, from which he has recently retired. He lives in Washington, D.C.
