Archibald MacLeish ( Pronounced: Mac-Leash)

1. Archibald MacLeish( Pronounced: Mac-Leash) Live Poet’s Society presentation by Sarah Parker

2. Biography • Born: May 7, 1892 in Glencoe, Illinois • Majored in English at Yale University • Harvard Law School, 1916-1919 • Married Ada Hitchcock in 1916 • Served in WWI • Editor of The New Republic • Moved to Paris in 1923 • Editor of Fortune Magazine from 1930-1938

3. Biography Continued • Appointed Librarian of Congress in 1939. Served for five years. • During WWII, served as director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures • Became Harvard’s professor of Rhetoric and Oratory,1949-1962 • Lecturer at Amherst College from 1963-1967 • Died: April 20, 1982 in Boston, Massachusetts

4. Influences • MacLeish greatly admired both T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. • Many criticized that his poems were directly derived from theirs, and that he had little of his own style. • While in Paris, rubbed elbows and became friends with: E.E. Cummings, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. • In early writings, he was a traditional modernist, believing a poet was isolated from society. • Later in life he changed his point of view, believing that it was suitable, if not inevitable for a poet to be involved in daily life. • He himself was involved in political positions, and public service

5. 1924 ~ The Happy Marriage (poetry) 1925 ~ The Pot of Earth (poetry) 1926 ~ Nobodaddy (play) 1928 ~ The Hamlet of A. MacLeish (poetry) 1930 ~ New Found Land (poetry) 1932 ~ Conquistador (poetry) 1933 ~ Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City (poetry) 1935 ~ Panic (play) 1937 ~ The Fall of the City (verse play for radio) 1938 ~ .Air Raid (play) 1939 ~ America Was Promises (poetry) 1940 ~ The Irresponsibles (prose) 1948 ~ Actfive and Other Poems (poetry) 1952 ~ Collected Poems 1917-1952 (poetry) 1952 ~ The Trojan Horse (play) 1958 ~ .J. B. (verse play produced on Broadway) 1961 ~ Poetry and Experience (prose) 1967 ~ Herakles (play) 1968 ~ The Wild Wicked Old Man (poetry) 1971 ~ Scratch (play) 1972 ~ The Human Season (poetry) 1978 ~ Riders on the Earth (prose) 1985 ~ Collected Poems, 1917-1982 (poetry) Works

6. 1933 ~ Pulitzer Prize for Conquistador 1953 ~ Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems 1917-1952 1953 ~ National Book Award in poetry 1953 ~ Bollingen Prize for poetry 1958 ~ Pulitzer Prize for J.B. 1966 ~ Academy Award for motion picture The Eleanor Roosevelt Story 1977 ~ Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977 ~ Cosmos Club Award Awards

7. Quite unexpectedly as Vasserot The armless ambidextrian was lighting A match between his great and second toe And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: And there, there overhead, there, there hung over Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes, There in the starless dark the poise, the hover, There with vast wings across the cancelled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing --- nothing at all. Sonnet: A 14 lined poem, usually in iambic pentameter, and has a definitive rhyme scheme. He also uses irony: “Armless ambidextran” “Vast wings across the cancelled skies” This is a prime example of an extended metaphor The End of The World

8. The earth, still heavy and warm with afternoon, Dazed by the moon: The earth, tormented with the moon’s light, Wandering in the night: La, La, The moon is a lovely thing to see— The moon is an agony. Full moon, moon rise, the old old pain Of brightness in dilated eyes, The ache of still Elbows leaning on the narrow sill, Of motionless cold hands upon the wet Marble of the parapet, Of open eyelids of a child behind The crooked glimmer of the window blind, Of sliding faint remindful squares Across the lamplight on the rocking-chairs: Why do we stand so late Stiff fingers on the moonlit gate? Why do we stand To watch so long the fall of moonlight on the sand? What is it we cannot recall? Tormented by the moon’s light The earth turns maundering through the night. Nocturne

9. Bibliography • http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/macleish/life.htm • http://washingtonart.com/beltway/macleish.html • http://learning.mgccc.cc.ms.us/writing/poetry/poetry.html • MacLeish, A.(1952). Collected Poems. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press