Word: macleish
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...MacLeish saw the work of the individual poet as part of a tradition of similar explorations into the same basic problems of human experience. Accordingly, his poetry reflects little of the stylistic experimentation prevalent in the work of contemporaries like Marianne Moore or e.e, cummings. He expresses this philosophy in a letter to Hemingway, arguing...
SUCH REVEALING and useful statements of MacLeish's literary convictions are one great advantage of such a collection. Another is the consistent political stance that emerges. A staunch believer in representative democracy, MacLeish quickly identified threats to the ideals of the Republic he believed in, whether from the left or the right. In the early thirties he was one of the first to attack the Marxist positions fashionable among writers and critics. An early objector to the House Un-American Activities Committee, he drew McCarthy's public condemnation, though he never actually had to testify. He detested Communism as "rotten...
Unfortunately, the nuggets are spread through an expanse of correspondence that sometimes becomes tedious. Winnick had access to all letters in MacLeish's possession (except those to and from his wife Ada) and he lists two pages of additional sources. No doubt he wanted to make a thorough and scholarly compilation, but the nearly 400 letters probably could have been cut by about a third without losing much. Nevertheless, it is well worth skimming through the housekeeping details, travel plans, and mundane dealings with editors to get to the plentiful meat...
...problem of editing is handled well through the section on MacLeish's years as a public servant in the forties. Just enough is given so that we get a sense of the scope of his massive re-organization of the Library of Congress, and of the variety of other duties he fulfilled in the Roosevelt administration, such as Assistant Secretary of State and director of the Office of Facts and Figures. There also comes some explanation of the convictions that motivated him to give up poetry for a time to serve his president and his country. He writes gratefully...
...MOST DRAMATIC series of letters involves MacLeish's efforts to free Ezra Pound. In 1955 he visited Pound in St. Elizabeth's mental hospital, where Pound had been held since the war as unfit to stand trial for treason. He writes to Hemingway, "What I saw made me sick and I made up my mind I wouldn't rest till he got out. Not only for his sake but for the good name of the country: after ten years it was beginning to look like persecution." For the next few years, MacLeish worked through his contacts in the Justice...