Anthony Hecht was born in 1923. He was the author of seven books of poetry, including The Hard Hours, which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1968. He received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1983), the Eugenio Montale Award (1984), the Wallace Stevens Award (1997), and the Robert Frost Medal (2000). He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 2004.