Archibald Macleish

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Still he stands

Watching the vortex widen and involve

in swirling dissolution the whole earth

and circle through the skies till swaying time

collapses, crumpling into dark the skies

-from the poem “Einstein';
INTRODUCTION
Archibald MacLeish was always a loner. Although he married he was always wondering about man’s relationship to the world. He wondered why people could not see that they were wasting the little time we have on this earth. He tried to show in his poems “the reality of the emotions that words cannot describe.';(Falk 27) Often he would include in his poems laws of nature and physics which gave him a unique style.
(Falk 24)
BIOGRAPHY
Archibald MacLeish was born in Glencoe, Illinois to an average middle class family. His father, Andrew MacLeish, was a businessman. His mother, Martha Hillard MacLeish, was a homemaker. His parents soon realized they had a very gifted son so they sent him to the Hotchkiss School. This school catered to his many different interests. Of all the things MacLeish excelled at he was the best at writing. Archibald graduated at the top of his class and was accepted to Yale University. While at Yale MacLeish studied law, but continued his writing and in his off time the university published a book of his works.
After Yale, MacLeish decided to focus on his poetry and his new wife and children. During this time off he wrote his first collaboration called Tower of Ivory Then in 1917 he went to France to serve in the war as a private. He rose from private to captain in just one year of service. Upon his return to the United States MacLeish began teaching at Harvard. While there he taught International Law and Constitutional Law which improved his grammar skills greatly. MacLeish was accepted by the Massachusetts bar in 1920. He began practicing law in Boston and continued to do that for three years. MacLeish then returned to France to focus on his writing. While in France MacLeish spent much time outdoors so he wrote about what he saw and what he thought of it. During his time in France, MacLeish wrote the poems “The Happy Marriage';,';The Pot of Earth';, and the controversial poem about religion called “Nobodaddy.';(Moritz 143)
MacLeish returned to America in 1928 and that same year he wrote The Hamlet of A. MacLeish. This book was a tribute to Shakespeare , but his work reflected that of his fellow poet ,T.

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