Synopsis "Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy"
The third edition of this much acclaimed book, which features a 45,000 word interview, with a career sketch, a comprehensive bibliography, and a representative list of quotations from Hecht's critics and reviewers. The new edition also contains 30+ b&w photos of Hecht, showing him at all stages of his life and career. 'This new book from Between The Lines presents a kind of "imaginary conversation" developed from a batch of written questions mailed to the poet, and a flurry of replies, follow-up questions, and voluntary expansions - but at its heart is the plum reward of new angles from which to engage the poems ...Anthony Hecht in Conversation has the frankness and summative qualities of the best memoirs, and extends well beyond the boundaries of the average magazine interview ...... the questions are those of a canny and caring reader of the poetry, and the book comes across with the ease of a conversation - an unusual one, true - but still with the turn of talk. For this seamlessness and for the labour of the bibliography we should be grateful. And it is Hoy who raises the anecdote of the early morning taxi ride to an airport, in which Hecht, to amuse James Wright, intoned from memory all of 'Lycidas' - in the voice of W.C. Fields! As the excellent Between The Lines series continues ... we can look forward to "fresh woods" (pause) and "pastures new".' David Latane, 'Fresh Woods, Pastures New', Stand, June 2000
