There can be no doubt: Anthony Hecht writes gorgeous lines, metrically perfect and full of satisfying assonances. He’s erudite and witty and his poems positively brim over with wonderful vignettes: speculation about the true fish-founder of America (a cod or herring, no doubt); elegant musings upon Venetian dogshit; funny, meticulous renderings of off-season grand hotels and their fading habitués. The poetry rolls out like a brocade, with nary a pulled thread to slow the reader. The effect of the book is somewhat geological: the slow and steady impact of accumulated detail. Hecht’s sentences are nearly endless, his vocabulary lapidary, his images patiently unfurled, his gaze sly and mirthful.

Still, this book failed to ignite anything in me beyond admiration. The poems impress but do not move or surprise. It’s a strange thing – I chalk it up to a complete lack of palate cleansing in a book that has the intensity of a rich dessert. There’s no room, amidst the dense ornament of the poems, to consider the flavour of the imagery. In fact, there is so much of everything that almost nothing can make an impact or truly resonate. These poems are the opposite of spare or aphoristic. Deploying a syntax weighty with adjectives and layered with extra (though sometimes lovely) clauses, Hecht continually flirts with grandiloquence. Added to that, he occasionally (and annoyingly) comes off as smugly superior. His “Application for a Grant” sneers at bartenders, politicians and athletes (“their brains squeezed out through their pores”) before ending on a falsely modest note about the poet’s humble ambitions.

The Venetian Vespers is certainly an accomplished book, with wit, insight and flawlessly modulated cadence, and it is worth a read. For talent, Hecht deserves a higher rating, but for overall effect, I think three stars is fair. For readers who enjoy closely observed long poems, however, this book may rate higher. ( )