Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs.

He was educated at various schools in the city - he was a classmate of Jack Kerouac at Horace Mann School - but showed no great academic ability something he would later refer to as "conspicuous. Career
After the war ended Hecht was sent to Japan where he became a staff writer with Stars and Stripes. Hecht won a number of notable literary awards including: the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for the volume The Hard Hours) the 1983 Bollingen Prize the 1988 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize the 1989 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry the 1997 Wallace Stevens Award the 1999/2000 Frost Medal and the Tanning Prize.

His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history with the Second World War in which he fought and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.