On May 7, 1892, a baby boy was born in Glencoe, Illinois, to Scottish immigrant and businessman Andrew MacLeish and college professor and president Martha Hillard. Martha named him Archibald, and as he grew, she encouraged in him a love for reading. This love took root in her son, who would go on to become a famous poet, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and influential statesman. Reflecting on his upbringing later, Archibald MacLeish said, “Her insistence on reading those books that had meant most to her . . . was the greatest piece of luck ever. I’ve often wondered how much it had to do with my commitment to poetry. I think I have a guess.”
Archibald MacLeish studied at Yale University where he edited Yale Literary Magazine. After graduation, he attended law school at Harvard University. While a student there, he met and married Ada Hitchcock in 1917. The two were married for 65 years. During MacLeish’s second year of law school, the U.S. entered World War I. MacLeish left to serve in France at a front-line hospital. He later transferred to a field artillery unit. MacLeish referred to WWI as “the most murderous, hypocritical, unnecessary and generally nasty of all recorded wars.” He said, “I had been under fire myself just enough to feel a lack of real purpose, only a presence of accidental mechanical purpose, and it colored the whole experience for me.” MacLeish was discharged in 1919 and returned to finish his law degree, graduating first in his class. During all this, MacLeish never stopped writing.
In 1923, after working for a prestigious Boston law firm for a few years, MacLeish and his wife decided to expatriate to Paris, where MacLeish could focus on his writing. He joined the group of writers often known as “The Lost Generation,” which included such literary legends as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Of that time, MacLeish said, “what lured us to Paris and held us there was the fact of the magnificent work being done by people from all over the world and in all the arts. This was a period really like the great Quattrocento . . . it was a period of extraordinary achievement.” This was certainly true for MacLeish. He published a series of poems that would go on to become staples of literary anthologies.
In the 30s, MacLeish and his family returned to the U.S. He was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the librarian of Congress and, subsequently, assistant secretary of state. Of this time, MacLeish said, “I think that the reorganization of the Library of Congress . . . was the best thing I did.” In 1949, MacLeish became a professor of rhetoric at Harvard. MacLeish’s works garnered him plenty of attention. Some of his most enduring works are Conquistador, J.B., You, Andrew Marvell, Immortal Autumn, and America Was Promises. The hallmark of a legendary author is that their work is timeless. This certainly feels true of MacLeish’s writing. For example, in the last poem MacLeish wrote before taking the job as librarian of Congress, he explores the idea of America as the promise of the fulfillment of dreams. He writes:
Who is the voyager in these leaves?
Who is the traveler in this journey
Deciphers the revolving night: receives
The signal from the light returning?
America was promises to whom?
East were the
Dead kings and the remembered sepulchres:
West was the grass.
And all beautiful
All before us
America was always promises.
He goes onto suggest that the original promises of America haven’t always been kept. That
the Aristocracy of politic selfishness
Bought the land up: bought the towns: the sites:
The goods: the government: the people. Bled them.
Sold them. Kept the profit. Lost itself.
But he believes there is a chance. MacLeish reminds the reader of freedom-seeking uprisings in
Spain Austria Poland China Bohemia.
There are dead men in the pits in all those countries.
Their mouths are silent but they speak. They say
“The promises are theirs who take them.”
He goes on to implore his generation of Americans that if the promise of their country is not being given to them, they must take it. At the end of his life, MacLeish said of this poem: “Everything about America is based on a beginning which was all promises. We certainly have buggered them, but I guess that’s what mankind does, bugger the promises, and maybe save a few,” a message of action and hope that still seems poignant some eight decades later.
Learn more here:
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Archibald-MacLeish
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/archibald-macleish
- https://www.americanheritage.com/america-was-promises
- https://www.loc.gov/item/n80015459/archibald-macleish-1892-1982-2/
