Arthur Macy (June 6, 1842 – June 1, 1904) emerged as a distinctive voice in 19th-century American poetry, blending Quaker sensibility with a soldier’s grit and a businessman’s pragmatism. Born on Nantucket Island to Oliver C. Macy and Phebe Fowler Macy, descendants of Thomas Macy—the Quaker leader who famously purchased Nantucket from Indigenous tribes—Arthur’s early life was steeped in New England’s maritime culture…
“Don't talk baseball to him. He don't care anything about it, he don't know anything about it, and he don't want to.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Irony
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