Anthony Hecht: A Hill

Anthony Hecht
(1923-2004)

Anthony Hecht (1923-2004): "A Hill"
from The Hard Hours (1967)

I was learning to write free verse at Foothill College (summer 1987) when I came across Anthony Hecht first poem in his The Hard Hours. The images in "A Hill" overwhelmed me. I had been to Italy, saw the Farnese Palace, the sunlit piazza with its carts of commercial merchandizing, but never in my wildest dream could I capture all the buzzling activities the way Hecht did. How charming it was to describe the pushcarts scene as "A small navy of carts" as if we're on the high seas. I had read Dante and the visions of saints in my spiritual journey, but Hecht's vision seemed somehow sharper and more precise than the language of the mystics with their overladen clichés of "divine" and "spirit". The hunting scene with the "crack of a rifle" and "soft papery crash" appeared mysterious. I was also troubled by the contrast between the "warm sunlit piazza" among friends and his feeling of "cold and silence" at the lonely hill. Finally, Hecht reveals that this vision happened ten years ago, and he had just remembered that hill— it was the one that he stood before as a boy "for hours in wintertime." The mystery of his vision is at last revealed as a memory from childhood. I had a feeling of deep satisfaction in reading this poem. From then on, I began to appreciate modern poetry to mystical literature, for poets teach me to see in a new way that is refreshing. (Peter Y. Chou)

A Hill (1967)

In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision once— though you understand
It was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,
And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,
Picking my way through a warm sunlit piazza
In the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadows
From huge umbrellas littered the pavement and made
A sort of lucent shallows in which was moored
A small navy of carts. Books, coins, old maps,
Cheap landscapes and ugly religious prints
Were all on sale. The colors and noise
Like the flying hands were gestures of exultation,
So that even the bargaining
Rose to the ear like a voluble godliness.
And then, where it happened, the noises suddenly stopped,
And it got darker; pushcarts and people dissolved
And even the great Farnese Palace itself
Was gone, for all its marble; in its place
Was a hill, mole-colored and bare. It was very cold,
Close to freezing, with a promise of snow.
The trees were like old ironwork gathered for scrap
Outside a factory wall. There was no wind,
And the only sound for a while was the little click
Of ice as it broke in the mud under my feet.
I saw a piece of ribbon snagged on a hedge,
But no other sign of life. And then I heard
What seemed the crack of a rifle. A hunter, I guessed;
At least I was not alone. But just after that
Came the soft and papery crash
Of a great branch somewhere unseen falling to earth.

And that was all, except for the cold and silence
That promised to last forever, like the hill.

Then prices came through, and fingers, and I was restored
To the sunlight and my friends. But for more than a week
I was scared by the plain bitterness of what I had seen.
All this happened about ten years ago,
And it hasn't troubled me since, but at last, today,
I remembered that hill; it lies just to the left
Of the road north of Poughkeepsie; and as a boy
I stood before it for hours in wintertime.

— Anthony Hecht, "A Hill",
The Hard Hours
Atheneum, New York, 1967, pp. 2-3

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Wikipedia: Anthony Hecht
Academy of American Poets: Anthony Hecht
Modern American Poetry: Anthony Hecht
Poet, Essayist Anthony Hecht Dies at 81
(By Matt Schudel, Washington Post, Oct. 22, 2004, B7)
Anthony Hecht's Poem "A Hill" (Harvard University)
Essays on Anthony Hecht's Poem "A Hill"

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