In these essays, acclaimed poet and critic Anthony Hecht explores the ways in which poetry can be read and the many pleasures it affords. Ranging from Shakespeare's sonnets to Eliot, Frost, and Simic, Melodies Unheard offers profound insight into poetic form, meter, rhyme, and meaning--into the mysteries of poetry itself. "Anthony Hecht's vast knowledge of literature and his gift for mesmerizing argument are both amply present in Melodies Unheard. Whether defending the sestina against accusations of boredom and dolefulness or examining the structure of Shakespeare's sonnets or unraveling some of the complexity of Moby-Dick, these essays are models of civility, candor, and grace. I know of no other poet, certainly none of Anthony Hecht's stature, who sheds as much light on the intricacies and hidden designs of poems and who does it with such style."--Mark Strand "Anthony Hecht declares himself 'a poet first and only secondarily a critic,' but Melodies Unheard proves again that he is a master in both trades.
His discourse on such subjects as rhyme, the sestina, and 'the music of forms' is both scholarly and delightful; his articles on individual poets are finely done; and best of all, perhaps, are his penetrating treatments of particular poems--his reading of Bishop's 'The Man-Moth,' for instance, his biographical placement of Frost's 'The Wood-Pile,' his discussion of emotional paradox in Hopkins' 'The Wreck of the Deutschland.'When Hecht goes beyond the preserve of poetry, as in his forceful pieces on Moby-Dick and St. Paul, it is always a splendid bonus."--Richard Wilbur "The wise products of a preeminent practitioner of the art, Anthony Hecht's essays on poetry spring from a passionate curiosity about the work of his predecessors and peers. Their fit audience includes those figures themselves--Shakespeare and Sidney, Housman and Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney--and their other ardent readers. Uninterested in the kind of local poetics and short views that are based on positions and programs, Hecht converses with writers--poets and scholars alike--who are committed to the long tradition and the timeless individual talents it nourishes.
Although intensely personal (how many others have written originally on Frost's "The Wood-Pile," or subtly on three exemplary English translations of a virtually perfect lyric by Apollinaire, or on Henry Noel at all?)--no, because intensely personal--his essays on a broad range of topics will one by one fascinate a broad range of readers: to wit, those intrigued by the multifarious nuances, technical and philosophical, the unheard music, of literary genius."--Stephen Yenser