Images and Violence in the Poetry of Anthony Hecht

Abstract

This paper deals with the production and examination of images in the poetry of Anthony Hecht, in specific relation to the poet’s compulsive presentation of violence. Technical and theoretical matters of image theory are brought to bear upon Hecht’s entire body of work, in order to demonstrate the alliance between poetic methodology and ethical argumentation. HIs poems are explored as examples as well as critiques of modern culture, in which artistic representation and historical atrocity coexist and interact at various levels. The thesis considers the violence enacted by images as well as that portrayed within them, and investigates the diverse effects available to the ekphrastic mode and to composite works that include pictures as well as poems (principally in Hecht’s collaboration with woodcut artist Leonard Baskin).