| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
67 pages ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references. |
| Contents |
Late Afternoon: The Onslaught of Love -- Circles -- Memory -- Mirror -- Samson -- An Orphic Calling -- Rara Avis in Terris -- A Fall -- Haman -- A Certain Slant -- A Brief Account of Our City -- Saul and David -- Despair -- The Hanging Gardens of Tyburn -- Judith -- Illumination -- Look Deep -- Nocturne: A Recurring Dream -- Lot's Wife -- Public Gardens -- Sacrifice -- The Witch of Endor -- Indolence -- The Ashen Light of Dawn (Baudelaire) -- The Plastic and the Poetic Form (Goethe) -- The Bequest (Vaillant) -- Once More, with Feeling (Charles d'Orleans) -- Le Jet d'Eau (Baudelaire) -- Taking Charge (Charles d'Orleans) -- A Symposium (Horace) -- A Special Occasion (Horace) -- A Prayer to Twin Divinities (Horace) -- Miriam -- Witness -- Lapidary Inscription with Explanatory Note -- Long-Distance Vision -- Secrets -- Poppy -- The Ceremony of Innocence -- The Road to Damascus -- Elders -- Sarabande on Attaining the Age of Seventy-seven -- I.M.E.M. -- "The Darkness and the Light Are Both Alike to Thee." |
| Summary |
An exquisite book in which a series of poems about biblical characters -- "Samson", "Saul and David", "Judith", and so on -- provides the backdrop for other reflections on both the beauty and the darkness in contemporary life. We see ourselves in fresh light as Hecht illuminates the simililarites between our own age and the biblical world, and finds postmodern sadness in stories like that of Miriam, who announces in her poem, "I had a nice voice once, and a large following./I was, you might say, a star". The centerpiece of the volume is the stunning "Sacrifice", a three-part poem that connects the story of Abraham and Isaac to an arresting Second World War scene unfolding in provincial occupied France in 1945. |
|
Throughout, there is a poignant sense of life lived and catalogued by a mature sensibility. As Hecht writes with clear-eyed grace in "Sarabande on Attaining the Age of Seventy-Seven" |
| Subject |
American poetry -- 20th century.
|
|
American poetry. (OCoLC)fst00807348
|
| Chronological Term |
1900-1999
|
| Added Author |
Poets Laureate Collection (Library of Congress) DLC
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Hecht, Anthony, 1923-2004. Darkness and the light. 1st ed. New York : A.A. Knopf, 2001 (OCoLC)606533098 |
| ISBN |
0375411941 (hc) |
|
9780375411946 (hc) |
|
0375709460 (tpb) |
|
9780375709463 (tpb) |
|
