In its clear-eyed mercy toward human weakness, Anthony Hecht's poetry goes from strength to strength. "The Venetian Vespers" is at once an intense corroboration and an ample extension of his subtle, supple talents. Nothing humane is alien to him….

[There is a handful] of short poems that are fostered alike by beauty and fear. But it is the four long poems ["The Grapes," "The Deodand," "The Short End," and "The Venetian Vespers"] that confirm Hecht as a poet of the widest apprehensions and comprehensions, and this without the gigantism that so haunts American poetic ambition. (p. 1)

Succinct and poignant, and with a steely unsentimentality despite its width of concern for all concerned, the title poem constitutes the quintessence of an entire novel. The plot—an unforgivable yet hideously natural family betrayal—is direct, and yet it is released, with touching reluctance, only indirectly and piecemeal. "The Venetian Vespers...