“The poet's task is not to make the world strange, but to make the…” — Archibald MacLeish

“The poet's task is not to make the world strange, but to make the strange world visible.”

Emphasising poetry's power to reveal the unfamiliarity already present in ordinary life · Lecture on poetry

About Archibald MacLeish

7 May 1892–20 April 1982

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…

More by Archibald MacLeish