Well, for me, at least, jet lag is worse going west, and I spent the whole time in Yuma disoriented and tired. Here's a sign of how bad it was: the only time I could read with any concentration was on the airplane. But what I read!
I bought Anthony Hecht's The Hard Hours when it was new and lost it to my first wife — though I don't know if she took it or if it was one of the books I sold while I nearly drowned in the aftermath of her leaving. In any case, I wasn't then interested in meter or rhyme and never bought any more of his work until The Darkness and the Light came out in 2001. That book led me to buy his Collected Earlier Poems, which includes the complete texts of The Hard Hours, Millions of Strange Shadows, and The Venetian Vespers, along with a selection from his first book, A Summoning of Stones. I bogged down in the "Shadows" section and didn't finish the book, despite being utterly thrilled by the earliest poems and by Hecht's performance as academic and poet at the 2001 and 2004 West Chester conferences.
I thought this trip would be a good opportunity to try again, so I brought it and the also not-yet-read Collected Later Poems. I must confess that, if transcontinental flight was not so boring and uncomfortable, I would once again have failed to get through the poems of Millions of Strange Shadows. Too many are too mannered, too precious in their vocabulary (in the hotel room I found that even the OED didn't list all of the words which had stumped me on the plane), too pleased with their own cleverness and intricacy. Or maybe I'm an oaf.
But commercial flight is boring and uncomfortable, and the poems of The Hard Hours created substantial momentum, and I finished the book on the plane and read it again that night in the hotel room (where I did skip most of "Shadows"). Utter magic: "It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It," "Three Prompters from the Wings," "The Song of the Flea," "Lizards and Snakes," "The Deodand," "The Venetian Vespers."
I read the second book on the flight back. On a mailing list I subscribe to, someone, I don't remember who, asked about Hecht's work whether a sestina was an appropriate response to the Holocaust. Only a true (though probably temporary) oaf could ask that question after reading "The Book of Yolek." Hecht, in his poetry at least, was a perceptive and stern moralist who didn't spare himself. More unusually, he understood moral failure, and he didn't let his moralism defeat his wit. In "The Ghost in the Martini," from Millions of Strange Shadows, his younger self attempts to interrupt an attempted seduction. These verses are the beginning, the ghost's initial interruption, and the ending:
Over the rim of the glass
Containing a good martini with a twist
I eye her bosom and consider a pass,
Certain we'd not be missed
…
Her smile is meant to convey
How changed or how modest I am, I can't tell which,
When suddenly I hear someone close to me say,
"You lousy son-of-a-bitch!"
A young man's voice by the sound,
Coming, it seems, from the twist in the martini.
"You arrogant, elderly letch, you broken-down
Brother of Apeneck Sweeney!"
…
Meanwhile, she babbles on
About men, or whatever, and the juniper juice
Shuts up at last, having sung, I trust, like a swan.
Still given to self-abuse!
Better get out of here;
If he opens his trap again it could get much worse.
I touch her elbow, and, leaning toward her ear,
Tell her to find her purse.
Last week I wrote "[t]he great theme of that conversation [literature] is how we should live with one another in the world." No 20th Century poet in English had a more humane part in that conversation than Anthony Hecht.
7:20:10 PM 
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