Archibald MacLeish Biography Quotes 19 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Archibald MacLeish was born in 1892 in the American Midwest and grew up in Illinois, where a strong literary inclination emerged early. He was educated at preparatory school in New England and then at Yale, where he edited the undergraduate literary magazine and began publishing poems with a modern, experimental bent. He continued on to Harvard Law School, a conventional course that satisfied family expectations even as his own commitment to poetry deepened. In this period he married Ada Hitchcock, whose practical intelligence and quiet determination would support his choices through decades of change. The death of his younger brother Kenneth, a Navy aviator killed in World War I, marked him profoundly and helped confirm his belief that poetry should speak to the moral crises of public life.

War, Law, and the Turn to Poetry
MacLeish served as an artillery officer in the First World War. After demobilization, he returned to Harvard to complete his law degree and practiced in Boston for several years. The work was successful but not sustaining. In the early 1920s he made a decisive break, leaving the security of the law for a writer's life. With Ada and their young family he moved to Paris, joining a generation of American expatriates who experimented with literature and art in a city alive with ideas.

Paris and the Making of a Modernist Poet
In Paris he entered the vibrant circle that included Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and others associated with modernist innovation. The influence of that community sharpened his ear and clarified his ambitions: to write poems that were exact in image, musical in cadence, and clear in moral address. Among the works of this period were texts that became touchstones of his career, including "Ars Poetica", with its compressed dictum "A poem should not mean but be", and later "You, Andrew Marvell", which fused classical reference with the anxieties of a darkening century. He returned to the United States with a mature voice that balanced lyric intensity with civic purpose.

Journalism, Public Voice, and the Depression Era
Back in America during the late 1920s and 1930s, MacLeish wrote for Fortune, the magazine founded by Henry Luce, traveling widely and learning the textures of American industry and labor during the Great Depression. The journalistic discipline of clear prose strengthened his public voice. His long poem "Conquistador" earned the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1933, and works like "Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City" probed the relationship between money, art, and democratic ideals. He also experimented with theater and the new medium of radio; "The Fall of the City", broadcast in 1937 with a cast that included Orson Welles and music by Bernard Herrmann, warned against the seductions of authoritarian power.

Librarian of Congress and Wartime Service
In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed MacLeish Librarian of Congress. The choice was controversial among professional librarians, but he won respect by working closely with career staff to modernize cataloging, streamline administration, and widen the institution's public mission. He championed the Library's cultural role, supporting field recordings and documentation projects associated with folklorists such as John and Alan Lomax, and he promoted the idea that a national library should be both a treasury of memory and a living resource for citizens.

As the Second World War intensified, Roosevelt asked him to help coordinate government communication. MacLeish directed the Office of Facts and Figures and then served as an assistant director of the Office of War Information under Elmer Davis, arguing that truthful, confident speech was a strategic asset of democracy. In 1944 he became Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Relations under Secretary Edward Stettinius Jr. He helped draft formative language for international cultural cooperation in the postwar settlement and contributed to the vision that would shape UNESCO, whose constitution famously begins, "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed".

Poet, Playwright, and Teacher
After the war MacLeish returned to full-time writing while accepting a chair at Harvard as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, where he taught generations of students to read and speak with precision. His verse drama "J.B.", a modern retelling of the Book of Job, opened on Broadway in 1958 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. The book "Collected Poems, 1917, 1952" earned him a second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Across essays and lectures he argued that poetry is a way of knowing, a disciplined attention to experience that resists both propaganda and cynicism. He maintained friendships and collaborations across the arts and media, from the newsroom to the stage, embodying his belief that the poet's place extends beyond the page.

Later Years and Legacy
MacLeish's later work blended meditations on history with intimate lyrics of age and memory. He continued to write, speak, and serve on cultural commissions, defending the freedoms of expression he had championed during the war. Throughout, Ada remained his closest companion, and the memory of his brother Kenneth's sacrifice continued to shadow his reflections on duty and grief. He died in 1982, leaving a body of work that spans lyric poetry, public oratory, dramatic experiment, and institutional stewardship.

Archibald MacLeish stands as a distinctive American figure: a modernist poet who held national office, a civil servant who wrote lines that endure in anthologies, and a teacher who returned again and again to the responsibilities of words. His career joined names and institutions central to the 20th-century United States, from Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Luce to the Library of Congress and UNESCO, while his poems kept faith with the human scale of feeling and moral choice. In an era of crisis and rebuild, he showed that art and democracy strengthen each other when language strives for truth.

Our collection contains 19 quotes who is written by Archibald, under the main topics: Wisdom - Justice - Freedom - Poetry - Peace.

Other people realated to Archibald: John Ciardi (Dramatist)

• 1958 J.B. (Play)
• 1952 Collected Poems, 1917-1952 (Collection)
• 1937 The Fall of the City (Play)
• 1926 Ars Poetica (Poetry)
• 1917 Poems (Collection)