Flight Among the Tombs: Poems [Paperback]

Anthony Hecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Flight Among the Tombs, Anthony Hecht's sixth book of poems published since 1954, shows one of America's foremost poets working at the top of his form. Part scholar, part circus ringmaster, Hecht calls our attention to three rings of his erudition: classical wit, Renaissance energy, and contemporary doubt. A fragment of Christopher Smart provides the book's title, but George Herbert, in whose clever prosodic vineyards Hecht has long labored, casts the book's longest shadow. The first half contains lyrical poems in which Death--both scythe-hauling figure and physical phenomenon--speaks as the central character inside a collage of masks: carnival barker, film director, society lady, member of the Harlem Guild of St. Luke, and, of course, poet. Hilarious and creepy, the poems combine Hecht's late-modernist sense of ironic humor with an orchestra of Latin and Renaissance conceits, stripping away the latter's theology to express a very inclusive mortality. Yet Hecht, whose deep humanity prevents these poems from becoming mere set pieces of the macabre, turns this message of doom into a call to enjoy the unpredictable in life, as the speaker watching aristocrats dine says in "Death the Mexican Revolutionary,"

We recommend the quail,
Which you'd do well to eat
Before your powers fail,
For I inaugurate
A brand-new social order
Six cold, decisive feet
South of the border.

Several occasional poems in the book's second half mark the passing of Hecht's generation, including "For James Merrill: An Adieu" and "A Death in Winter," honoring the memory of Joseph Brodsky. These poems are particularly moving in light of the rambunctious sensibility of the volume's first half. At turns outrageous and somber, Flight Among the Tombs is a surprising addition to Hecht's oeuvre. --Edward Skoog

From Library Journal

This volume gathers all the poems published by Pulitzer Prize-winning Hecht since the appearance of The Transparent Man (LJ 6/15/90), but it is best understood as a supplement to the majestic progress of the Collected Earlier Poems (Knopf, 1990); it shares the earlier work's preoccupation with matters of mortality and history, and, like that volume, this features a poetic sequence illustrated by Leonard Baskin's unnerving wood engravings. That sequence, "Presumptions of Death," is perhaps the last and strangest instantiation of the Danse Macabre, for in it Death not only draws us out of every condition and stage of life but meets us there, perfectly disguised as one of ourselves. A variety of lyrics, including elegies for fellow poets James Merrill and Joseph Brodsky, round out the volume. Hecht's bitterly melodious lines perfectly express the rich ruminations of an outstanding poet; he is, like the camel of his poem, "the royal pattern of patience,/ and wisdom's legate." Highly recommended.?Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (January 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679765921
• ISBN-13: 978-0679765929
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,208,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another stunning collection from Hecht, June 16, 2002

By 

[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Flight Among the Tombs: Poems (Paperback)

Hecht has to be one of the greatest living poets we have, and Flight Among the Tombs is another example of this. It is chiefly a sequence of poems where Death speaks as or through someone else. It is a powerful sequence of poems set with wood engravings Leonard Baskin. The combination is stunning. The section section of the book is a few poems added, I'm guessing, to make this a book-length collection. Luckily, with a poet of Hecht's caliber, the filler poems are just as good as the main portion of the book.