In the pantheon of twentieth-century American letters, few figures embodied as many contradictions and reconciliations as Archibald MacLeish. Born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois, and dying on April 20, 1982, in Boston, Massachusetts, MacLeish lived through nearly the entire span of the American century, bearing witness to two world wars, the Great Depression, the atomic age, and the cultural revolutions that re…
“The freedom of the poet is not the freedom to say anything he pleases, but the freedom to say what he must.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
On January 25, 1876, in the quiet town of Plainfield, New Jersey, William Ellery Channing Leonard was born into a world of literary aspiration and transcendentalist idealism. His parents, fervent admirers of the New England intellectual tradition, named their only child after William Ellery Channing, the Unitarian minister who had mentored Ralph Waldo Emerson. This choice of name proved prophetic, for Leonard would s…
“Mother-love is the greatest blessing and the greatest peril in life.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
