H04072 ANTHONY HECHT CITES HARDY - 11/29/04 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES
From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: A poet thinks of Hardy
Date: November 29, 2004 10:13:51 AM PST
In these lines, "Declensions" -- cited by the New York Review of Books for Dec 04 -- Anthony Hecht speaks of "the ranks of poets" and names a few-- one of them being Hardy:
DECLENSIONS
By Anthony Hecht
And every fair from fair sometimes declines.
I can recall how yearly
The ranks of the GAR
Detectably thinned out
To an odd handful, merely;
A bugler, perhaps a scout
From that distant, mythic war.
In time their canes and crutches
Were discarded for wheelchairs
Pushed by some friendly boy;
Gone were the stalwart marchers,
Their military airs
Lost on the plains of Troy.
And my own comrades in arms-
Those of them that survive-
Must be few and far between;
The best of them-strong and lean
And bemedalled-if still alive
Will have suffered life's random harms.
The ranks of poets, too,
Ronsard and Leopardi,
Forgather beside the Styx,
There to receive their due:
At eighty-eight went Hardy,
Keats not yet twenty-six.
Worst, those whose minds decay
Into a lingering stupor
Beyond the reach of art
And the common light of day:
Like Hölderlin, Kit Smart,
And "buried-above-ground" Cowper.
May God preserve my wits,
Science do what it may
With scissors and thread and paste
To maintain the remaining bits
And faculties of today
That have not yet gone to waste.
Eyesight and hearing fade:
Yet I do not greatly care
If the grim, scythe-wielding thief
Pursue his larcenous trade,
Though anguished by the grief
Two that I love must bear.
____________
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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From: philip.irwin@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: A poet thinks of Hardy
Date: November 30, 2004 4:11:21 AM PST
Did he choose Leopardi to make a rhyme for Hardy, or
the other way about?...
Philip
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: A poet thinks of Hardy
Date: November 30, 2004 4:45:02 AM PST
Interesting -- I had the same thought about "Styx" and "six" --would there have been another name if Keats hadn't died at 26?
---Rosemarie
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From: wwmorgan@ilstu.edu
Subject: Re: A poet thinks of Hardy
Date: November 30, 2004 9:11:07 AM PST
. . . not to be *too* pedantic, but Hardy was actually 87-plus (about 5 months shy of his 88th) when he died on January 11, 1928. I wonder if Hecht knew that but didn't want to roughen his iambics too much by using eighty-seven. Or then, maybe he just did a quick check of TH's dates and did the math without thinking about birthdays.
Either way, I suspect our fellow wouldn't object to the mention in association with Hecht's themes, even if the poem does have a few slightly forced rhymes and a minor chronological error.
Bill
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