The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life - Anthony Hecht

**STOP**  Read the poem "Dover Beach", which is below this one (posted Friday), FIRST.  These two poems, separated by a hundred years and an ocean in authorship, are linked, as today's is a reaction (of sorts) to yesterday's.  Seriously: you will NOT "get" the references in this one or appreciate it UNLESS you read Friday's....        OK.  Read it?  You're back?  Proceeding....  Anthony Hecht (2nd poet here, and one of my favorites) wrote "Dover Bitch", which serves as both back-story and commentary on Arnold's "Dover Beach".  It's a creative tour de force as he imagines, in "Dover Bitch", being a man commenting on the story in "Dover Beach" from the woman to whom that narrator is speaking (as the poem).  The woman is the "love" in "Ah, love...." in the last strophe of "Dover Beach".  In this poem, Hecht is making his own comment, through the narrator, on the same theme "Dover Beach"
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So there stood MatthewArnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right.
We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.

                                                                            Anthony Hecht - American 

A Letter - Anthony Hecht

 There is a poem by Hecht (1923- 2004) whose imagery and power is so haunting that it should come with a warning label before reading.  A poet needs only one poem like "More Light! More Light!" (the title comes from Goethe's last words - and you've been forewarned!) to make his mark.  Hecht wrote in a long career with many poetry prizes, including a Pulitzer in 1967.  This one, aside from its effectiveness in creating a mood that lingers like a fog, also shows his command of form: one hardly notices the abcabc rhyming of the lines, but read it out loud and you'll hear the cadence.  That's genius. 
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                                        A  Letter

                  I have been wondering

         What you are thinking about, and by now suppose

                  It is certainly not me.

         But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering

                  Blood knows what it knows.

   It talks to itself all night, like a sliding, moonlit sea.

                  Of course, it is talking of you.

   At dawn, where the ocean has netted its catch of lights,

                  The sun plants one lithe foot

   On that spill of mirrors, but the blood goes worming through

                  Its warm Arabian nights,

Naming your pounding name again in the dark heartroot.

                  Who shall, of course, be nameless.

   Anyway, I should want you to know I have done my best,

                  As I am sure you have, too.

   Others are bound to us, the gentle and blameless

                  Whose names are not confessed

In the ceaseless palaver.  My dearest, the clear and bottomless blue

                  Of those depths is all but blinding.

   You may remember that once you brought my boys

                  Two little woolly birds.

   Yesterday the older one asked for you upon finding

                  Your thrush among his toys.

And the tides welled about me, and I could find no words.

                  There is not much else to tell.

   One tries one’s best to continue as before,

                  Doing some little good.

   But I would have you know that all is not well

                  With a man dead set to ignore

The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.

                                                                                             Anthony Hecht - American