W.H. Auden and Anthony Hecht, backstage in 1967 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Photo: Jill Krementz Anthony Hecht, a poet who surpassed others of his generation by the breadth of his subjects and the fierce refinement of his writing, was much more than a witness to war and the Holocaust. To call him a dark poet neglects his many passages of comedy and joy. He was also our most painterly writer, sometimes slathering on the language with a palette knife, yet he could write poems, as the English poet Ted Hughes noted, with an “absolute raw...