In this Book

Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry

Book
Anthony Hecht
2020
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Series: Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction
Funder: Mellon/NEH / Hopkins Open Publishing: Encore Editions
Program:
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summary
Originally published in 2003. The fruit of a lifetime's reading and thinking about literature, its delights and its responsibilities, this book by acclaimed poet and critic Anthony Hecht explores the mysteries of poetry, offering profound insight into poetic form, meter, rhyme, and meaning. Ranging from Renaissance to contemporary poets, Hecht considers the work of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Noel; Housman, Hopkins, Eliot, and Auden; Frost, Bishop, and Wilbur; Amichai, Simic, and Heaney. Stepping back from individual poets, Hecht muses on rhyme and on meter, and also discusses St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and Melville's Moby-Dick. Uniting these diverse subjects is Hecht's preoccupation with the careful deployment of words, the richness and versatility of language and of those who use it well.Elegantly written, deeply informed, and intellectually playful, Melodies Unheard confirms Anthony Hecht's reputation as one of our most original and imaginative thinkers on the literary arts.

Table of Contents

open access

Cover

New Copyright

Half Title

pp. i

Editor

pp. ii

Title Page

pp. iii

Copyright

pp. iv

Dedication

pp. v-vi

Epigraph

pp. vii-viii

Contents

pp. ix-x

Half Title 1

pp. x-xiii

Introduction

pp. 1-16

PART I

pp. 17-18

Shakespeare and the Sonnet

pp. 19-50

The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History

pp. 51-65

Sidney and the Sestina

pp. 66-85

On Henry Noel’s “Gaze Not on Swans”

pp. 86-92

PART II

pp. 93-94

Technique in Housman

pp. 95-105

On Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

pp. 106-121

Uncle Tom’s Shantih

pp. 122-130

Paralipomena to The Hidden Law

pp. 131-153

On Robert Frost’s “The Wood-Pile”

pp. 154-158

Two Poems by Elizabeth Bishop

pp. 159-171

Richard Wilbur: An Introduction

pp. 172-176

Yehuda Amichai

pp. 177-187

Charles Simic

pp. 188-204

Seamus Heaney’s Prose

pp. 205-215

PART III

pp. 216-217

Moby-Dick

pp. 219-237

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians

pp. 238-251

On Rhyme

pp. 252-274

The Music of Forms

pp. 275-299

Acknowledgments

pp. 301-304
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