Archibald MacLeish
The best known poem by Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), published in 1926, took its title and subject from Horace's work. His poem "Ars Poetica" contains the line "A poem should not mean/but be", which was a classic statement of the modernist aesthetic. The original manuscript of the poem is in the collections of the Library of Congress.
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Famous quotes by archibald macleish:
“What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a scientific breakthrough ... had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:
I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.
Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken,
Look! It is there!”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“It is the human season on this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.
I cry to you beyond upon his bitter air.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“Poets ... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)