However, as a freshman English student at Bard College in New York he discovered the works of Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas.

Hecht's parents were not happy at his plans and tried to discourage them, even getting family friend Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, to attempt to dissuade him.

[citation needed] In 1944, upon completing his final year at Bard, Hecht was drafted into the 97th Infantry Division and was sent to the battlefields in Europe.

He later won the Furioso Poetry Award and enrolled at Columbia University as a candidate for a master's degree in English literature.

In his second book, The Hard Hours, Hecht first addressed his own experiences of World War II – memories that had caused him to have a nervous breakdown in 1959.

[10] Hecht spent three months in hospital following his breakdown, although he was spared electric shock therapy, unlike Sylvia Plath, whom he had encountered while teaching at Smith College.

He also spent varying lengths of time teaching at other notable institutions such as Smith, Bard, Harvard, Georgetown, and Yale.

Extraordinarily erudite, his verse often features allusions to French literature, Greek myth, and tragedy, and English poets and poetry stretching from Wallace Stevens to John Donne.