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Archibald Macleish 2012 3
Archibald Macleish 2012 3
Archibald MacLeish
- poems -
Publication Date:
2012
Publisher:
Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive
Archibald MacLeish(7 May 1892 – 20 April 1982)
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress.
He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer
Prizes for his work.
<b>Expatriatism</b>
In 1923 MacLeish left his law firm and moved with his wife to Paris, France,
where they joined the community of literary expatriates that included such
members as <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/gertrude-stein/">Gertrude
Stein</a> and <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/ernest-
hemingway/">Ernest Hemingway</a>. They also became part of the famed
coterie of Riviera hosts Gerald and Sarah Murphy, which included Hemingway,
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos Fernand Léger, <a
href="http://www.poemhunter.com/jean-cocteau/">Jean Cocteau</a>, Pablo
Picasso, John O'Hara, Cole Porter, <a
href="http://www.poemhunter.com/dorothy-parker/">Dorothy Parker</a> and
Robert Benchley. He returned to America in 1928. From 1930 to 1938 he worked
as a writer and editor for Fortune Magazine, during which he also became
increasingly politically active, especially with anti-fascist causes.
While in Paris, Harry Crosby, publisher of the Black Sun Press, offered to
published MacLeish's poetry. Both MacLeish and Crosby had overturned the
normal expectations of society, rejecting conventional careers in the legal and
banking fields. Harry published MacLeish's long poem Einstein in a deluxe edition
<b>Librarian of Congress</b>
American Libraries has called MacLeish "one of the hundred most influential
figures in librarianship during the 20th century" in the United States. MacLeish’s
career in libraries and public service began, not with a burning desire from
within, but from a combination of the urging of a close friend Felix Frankfurter,
and as MacLeish put it, “The President decided I wanted to be Librarian of
Congress.” Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination of MacLeish was a controversial and
highly political maneuver fraught with several challenges. First, the current
Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, who had served at the post for 40 years,
needed to be persuaded to retire from the position. In order to be persuaded,
Putnam was made Librarian Emeritus. Secondly, Franklin D. Roosevelt desired
someone with similar political sensibilities to fill the post and to help convince the
American public that the New Deal was working and that he had the right to run
for an unprecedented third term in office. MacLeish’s occupation as a poet and
his history as an expatriate in Paris rankled many Republicans. Lastly, MacLeish’s
lack of a degree in library sciences or any training whatsoever aggravated the
librarian community, especially the American Library Association which was
campaigning for one of its members to be nominated. Despite these challenges,
President Roosevelt and Justice Frankfurter felt that the mixture of MacLeish’s
love for literature and his abilities to organize and motivate people, exemplified
by his days in law school, would be just what the Library of Congress needed.
MacLeish sought support from expected places such as the president of Harvard,
MacLeish’s current place of work, but found none. It was support from
unexpected places, such as M. Llewellyn Raney of the University of Chicago
libraries, which alleviated the ALA letter writing campaign against MacLeish’s
nomination. Raney pointed out to the detractors that, “MacLeish was a lawyer
like Putnam…he was equally at home in the arts as one of the four leading
American poets now alive…and while it was true that he had not attended a
professional school of library science, neither had thirty-four of thirty-seven
persons presently occupying executive positions at the Library of Congress.” The
main Republican arguments against MacLeish’s nomination from within Congress
was: that he was a poet and was a “fellow traveler” or sympathetic to communist
causes. Calling to mind differences with the party he had over the years,
MacLeish avowed that, “no one would be more shocked to learn I am a
Communist than the Communists themselves.” In Congress MacLeish’s main
advocate was Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley, Democrat from Kentucky.
With President Roosevelt’s support and Senator Barkley’s skillful defense in the
United States Senate, victory in a roll call vote with sixty-three Senators voting
It was a question from MacLeish’s daughter, Mimi, which led him to realize that,
“Nothing is more difficult for the beginning librarian than to discover what
profession he was engaged.” Mimi, his daughter, had inquired about what her
daddy was to do all day, “…hand out books?” MacLeish created his own job
description and set out to learn about how the library was currently organized. In
October 1944, MacLeish described that he did not set out to reorganize the
library, rather “…one problem or another demanded action, and each problem
solved led on to another that needed attention.”
First and foremost, under Putnam, the library was acquiring more books than it
could catalog. A report in December 1939, found that over one-quarter of the
library’s collection had not yet been cataloged. MacLeish solved the problem of
acquisitions and cataloging through establishing another committee instructed to
seek advice from specialists outside of the Library of Congress. The committee
found many subject areas of the library to be adequate and many other areas to
be, surprisingly, inadequately provided for. A set of general principles on
acquisitions was then developed to ensure that, though it was impossible to
collect everything, the Library of Congress would acquire the bare minimum of
canons to meet its mission. These principles included acquiring all materials
necessary to members of Congress and government officers, all materials
expressing and recording the life and achievements of the people of the United
States, and materials of other societies past and present which are of the most
immediate concern to the peoples of the United States.
Last, but not least, MacLeish promoted the Library of Congress through various
forms of public advocacy. Perhaps his greatest display of public advocacy was
requesting a budget increase of over a million dollars in his March 1940 budget
proposal to the United States Congress. While the library did not receive the full
increase, it did receive an increase of $367, 591, the largest one-year increase to
of the increase went toward improved pay levels, increased acquisitions in under
served subject areas, and new positions.
During World War II MacLeish also served as director of the War Department's
Office of Facts and Figures and as the assistant director of the Office of War
Information. These jobs were heavily involved with propaganda, which was well-
suited to MacLeish's talents; he had written quite a bit of politically motivated
work in the previous decade. He spent a year as the Assistant Secretary of State
for Public Affairs and a further year representing the U.S. at the creation of
UNESCO. After this, he retired from public service and returned to academia.
<b>Return to writing</b>
Despite a long history of criticizing Marxism, MacLeish came under fire from
conservative politicians of the 1940s and 1950s, including J. Edgar Hoover and
Joseph McCarthy. Much of this was due to his involvement with left-wing
organizations like the League of American Writers, and to his friendships with
prominent left-wing writers. In 1949 MacLeish became the Boylston Professor of
Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He held this position until his retirement in
1962. In 1959 his play J.B. won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. From 1963 to 1967
he was the John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer at Amherst College. Around 1969/70
he met Bob Dylan, who describes this encounter in the third chapter of
Chronicles, Vol. 1.
<b>Legacy</b>
MacLeish worked to promote the arts, culture, and libraries. Among other
impacts, MacLeish was the first Librarian of Congress to begin the process of
naming what would become the United States Poet Laureate. The Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress came from a donation in 1937
from Archer M. Huntington, a wealthy ship builder. Like many donations it came
with strings attached. In this case Huntington wanted the poet Joseph Auslander
to be named to the position. MacLeish found little value in Auslander’s writing.
However, MacLeish was happy that having Auslander in the post attracted many
other poets, such as <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/robinson-
jeffers/">Robinson Jeffers</a> and <a
href="http://www.poemhunter.com/robert-frost/">Robert Frost</a>, to hold
readings at the library. He set about establishing the consultantship as a
revolving post rather than a lifetime position. In 1943, MacLeish displayed his
love of poetry and the Library of Congress by naming <a
href="http://www.poemhunter.com/louise-bogan/">Louise Bogan</a> to the
position. Bogan, who had long been a hostile critic of MacLeish’s own writing,
asked MacLeish why he appointed her to the position; MacLeish replied that she
was the best person for the job. For MacLeish promoting the Library of Congress
and the arts was vitally more important than petty personal conflicts.
In the June 5, 1972 issue of The American Scholar, MacLeish laid out in an essay
his philosophy on libraries and librarianship, further shaping modern thought on
the subject. MacLeish remarked in the essay that libraries are more than a mere
collection of books. "If books are reports on the mysteries of the world and our
existence in it, libraries remain reporting on the human mind, that particular
mystery, still remains as countries lose their grandeur and universities are not
certain what they are." For MacLeish, libraries are a massive report on the
Two collections of MacLeish's papers are held at the Yale Library Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library. These are the Archibald MacLeish Collection and
Archibald MacLeish Collection Addition.
MacLeish had three children: Kenneth, Mary Hillard, and Peter. He is also a
great-uncle of film actress Laura Dern.
<b>Awards</b>
Archibald MacLeish
Days I remember of
Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
White the peach bough.
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -
Archibald MacLeish
Sun smudge on
the smoky water
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
First there is the wind but not like the familiar wind but long and without lapses
or falling away or surges of air as is usual but rather like the persistent pressure
of a river or a running tide.
This wind is from the other side and has an odor unlike the odor of the winds
with us but like time if time had odor and were cold and carried a bitter and
sharp taste like rust on the taste of snow or the fragrance of thunder.
When the air has this taste of time the frontiers are not far from us.
Then too there are the animals. There are always animals under the small trees.
They belong neither to our side nor to theirs but are wild and because they are
animals of such kind that wildness is unfamiliar in them as the horse for example
or the goat and often sheep and dogs and like creatures their wandering there is
strange and even terrifying signaling as it does the violation of custom and the
subversion of order.
There are also the unnatural lovers the distortion of images the penetration of
mirrors and the inarticulate meanings of the dreams. The dreams are in turmoil
like a squall of birds.
Finally there is the evasion of those with whom we have come. It is at the
frontiers that the companions desert us—that the girl returns to the old country
Archibald MacLeish
What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?
Archibald MacLeish
and the sea turns white and the wind goes round.
Archibald MacLeish
(3)
A world was ended when the womb
Where girl held God became the tomb
(4)
But are we sure
The age that dies upon its metaphor
Among these Roman heads, these mediaeval towers,
Is ours?—
Or ours the ending of that story?
The meanings in a man that quarry
Images from blinded eyes
And white birds and the turning skies
To make a world of were not spent with these
Abandoned presences.
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
They may drive him out of the camps but one will take him.
They may stop his tongue on his teeth with a rope’s argument—
He will lie in a house and be warm when they are shaking.
Neither his class nor his kind nor his trade may come near him
There where he lies on his left arm and will die,
Nor his class nor his kind nor his trade when the blood is jeering
And his knee’s in the soft of the bed where his love lies.
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Why do we stand
To watch so long the fall of moonlight on the sand?
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
To R. L.
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Works of soul—
Pilgrimages through the desert to the sacred boulder:
Through the mid night to the stroke of one!
Works of grace! Works of wonder!
All this have we done and more—
And seen—what have we not seen?—
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
Archibald MacLeish
Not these, nor all we've been, nor all we've loved,
The pitiful familiar names, had moved
Our hearts to weep for them; but oh, the star
The future is! Eternity's too wan
To give again that undefeated, far,
All-possible irradiance of dawn.
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Numbs
To an ether throbbing of inaudible drums
Unfolds
Hush within hush until the night withholds
Among
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish