Product Description
This expanded volume of the distinguished poet's work contains 29 previously uncollected poems, some that had been published, and some found in manuscript after MacLeish's death in 1982. This is the definitive volume produced by a life that filled several careers as writer, teacher, and public servant, but was devoted above all to poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Bring him back!
I say, Bring him back! because MacLeish has pretty well dropped from sight, except for 'Ars Poetica' and 'You, Andrew Marvell.' And it's true that one has to mine this hefty volume pretty carefully for the real treasure. Except for Conquistador (MacLeish's 1932 Pulitzer Prize-winning epic--really, it's a sort of epic lyric--of the Spanish conquest of Mexico), MacLeish's long poems hold very little aesthetic interest, and even Conquistador is marred by its indebtedness to the Ezra Pound of the early Cantos. But at his lyric best, MacLeish is incomparable: 'Eleven,' 'Memorial Rain,' ''Not Marble Nor the Gilded Monuments,'' 'Immortal Autumn,' 'Epistle To Be Left in the Earth,' 'Cook County,' 'Winter Is Another Country,' 'Calypso's Island,' 'What Riddle Asked the Sphinx,' 'The Reef Fisher,' 'The Infinite Reason,' 'Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell,' 'Captivity of the Fly,' 'Companions,' 'Mark's Sheep,' 'Rainbow at Evening,' and a generous handful of others drawn from every stage of a very long career. What is more, I cannot understand, in this age of the socially conscious anthology, why the editors of the Heath Anthology of American Literature haven't rediscovered the MacLeish of Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City (especially 'Empire Builders'), 'Lines for Interment,' the often misunderstood 'Invocation to the Social Muse' (a satire whose irony turns back on its speaker), 'Speech to Those Who Say Comrade,' and 'Brave New World' (which is especially relevant today, thanks to the so-called Patriot Act). MacLeish was THE poet of the Lost Generation and later the very first 'Fellow Traveler'--literally! His public and private voices merit hearing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

For school
Purchased for school but enjoyed the story!The book was in great shape and the story was interesting!

Ever Current
JB is a 20th century version of JOB, the most referred to book in the Bible. This modern masterpiece has all the drama and poignancy of its Old Testament counterpart and it has somewhat a better ending and answers to the question about why bad things happen to the good. JB's blinding trust in a God who rewards the good and punished the sinful remains despite all that happens to him or his family.
The devil has more compassion for him than God and his wife even more.She first leaves him for his maniacal faith only to return with her answer to the answerable--love.
The play raises the most troublesome question of faith and like the book Job has no answers except (1) the ways of God are mysterious (an answer unworthy of the question and those whose circumstances most need to know) and (2) your answer is the afterlife's rewarding heaven or fire-consuming hell.
There is no answer as God is silent and exists in the regions of one's faith and choice that stems from the free choice God gave us as a consequence of sin. Could He just have decided at the Garden to kick us out with a "good riddance?"
If you want to explore this question from a different viewpoint, read the ever wise Rabbi Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?
J.B. is a modern day (1950s) retelling of the biblical story of Job. To summarize: Job, God's most loyal servant, is punished by God without reason. God only wishes to prove that no matter what obstacles God threw at him, Job would still "praise God." While the story of Job makes a deep point about human suffering and the strength of faith, J.B. delves deeper.

The play centers on a dialogue between two characters, Zuss and Nickles, who play God and Satan respectively. Each makes important points about the root of suffering and God's role in Job's pain. Zuss argues, in more words or less, that Job has no right to question God. Nickles, instead, sympathizes with Job's pain believing that God has been unfair to mankind and especially to this man. Please grant that these are simplifications of their arguments, one can write novels on the meaning of this play.
Its not hard to imagine how the play ends, but like many things it's the journey not the destination that matter. The banter between the two, and satirical overtones of throwing the whole setting in a circus tent, take the reader beyond the norm. This is a story that requires the reader to engage, be prepared to think! You can not help but question your spirituality and faith during the play. For while few of us suffer as Job does, fewer still believe in God. Would you be able to still love God, if he took everything away from you?

I'll be straightforward and admit that my review is biased. MacLeish's J.B. has been (since reading it in my High School AP English Class) my favorite. I'm an avid reader, but there's something so subtly beautiful about MacLeish's language, something so deep in his words that have resounded in my heart, that I am compelled to re-read this play over and over again. MacLeish has a profound message to teach us "modern, disillusioned men" that one would have to have a heart of stone not to appreciate.

The Book of Job in present times
I was familiar with J.B. when it first came out in the late 50's or early 60's.The story of the Book of Job was updated to a time when nuclear war was a possibility, and that was the backdrop for J.B.'s (Job's) losses.With the terrorist threat now prevalent in the world, the play is now more timely than ever.

Modern take
Macleish's modern rendition of the Book of Job does an adequate job of converting the serious tale to a modern almost circus like story. Although sardonic at times, he keeps the main focus intact: WHY DO THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFER? ... Read more

Product Description
“There’s so much gold about life and letters on nearly every page of Scott Donaldson’s major biography of Archibald MacLeish that the book almost doesn’t need mining for nuggets.”
—Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

“MacLeish was in many ways a child of fortune…his luck still holds in having so fine a chronicler of his enchanted voyage.”
—The New England Quarterly

This book was the winner of the 1993 Ambassador Book Award for biography.

Customer Reviews (1)

Thorough and readable
Even though Donaldson is at times both apologetic for and uncritical of MacLeish (especially of his extramarital affairs, poetic unoriginality, and political toadyism), this biography is a thorough and readable account of Macleish's life and career as poet and statesman.Informative and enjoyable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Conquistador
Extremely evocative poem which really works if you have some working knowledge of the "Conquest of the New World". A lingering undercurrent of the rapine and slaughter that was visited upon the peoples of the Americas by these loutish,reprobates who in most cases would probably have spent most of their lives in Spanish jails,but by chance and good fortune became heroes to some,eternal villains to others.May the fires of Hell be eternally stoked for Cortez,Alvarado and their ilk ... Read more

Product Description
POEMS 1924-1933 POEMS, 1924-1933 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Cfje lUfeetttoe Cambtfoge FOREWORD THIS book is not a collected edition of my poems nor does it purport to trace my development as a poet. My development as a poet is of no interest to me and of even less interest, I should suppose, to anyone else. What I have done here has been to se lect from poems already published and from poems not yet pub lished, those pieces I can now reread without embarrassment. The test has, I confess, no objective value. But it has the ad vantages of practicality and honesty. The truth is that all artists who continue to be engaged in the practice of their arts resent and dislike their past accomplishments. Only those who have completed their work will stand, with as much complacency as they can find, upon the record. To the rest, because their minds are upon new work with new problems and new technique, old work with its stale problems and its abandoned technique is distasteful. The moral may well be that the poet should not make his own selection. But if he is to make it, I know no test he can apply, short of the pomposities of the critical canon, which will serve him as well as his own uneasiness. Such a method of selection does not, of course, justify the publication of a book. The justification in this case is the fact that most of the volumes from which these poems have been taken are not now, or will soon cease to be, available. Rather than reprint a number of small books, some of them containing work I do not wish to see reprinted, it has seemed best to make a single book. ARCHIBALD MACL. EISH CONWAY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1933 CONTENTS THE HAMLET OF A. MACLEISH 3 SEAFARER 33 LINES FOR A PROLOGUE 34 CINEMA OF A MAN 36 THE TOO-LATE BORN 39 LAN TRENTIESME DE MON EAGE 40 LE SECRET HUMAIN 42 VOYAGE 44 THE NIGHT DREAM 45 MEMORY GREEN 47 NOT MARBLE NOR THE GILDED MONUMENTS 48 UNFINISHED HISTORY 50 BROKEN PROMISE 52 BEFORE MARCH 53 DE VOTRE BONHEUR IL NE RESTE QUE VOS PHOTOS 55 1892-19 56 RETURN 57 You, ANDREW MARVELL 58 THE REVENANT 60 INTERROGATE THE STONES 61 INSOMNIA 63 SALUTE 64 EINSTEIN 67 SENTIMENTS FOR A DEDICATION 76 YACHT FOR SALE 78 FORTY-SECOND STREET 80 IMMORTAL HELIX 82 VERSES FOR A CENTENNIAL 83 MOTHER GOOSES GARLAND 85 MARCH 86 CORPORATE ENTITY 87 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS 88 MEN OF MY CENTURY LOVED MOZART 89 AETERNA POETAE MEMORIA 91 AGAINST ILLUMINATIONS 92 THE END OF THE WORLD 93 THE POT OF EARTH 95 ARS POETICA 122 IMMORTAL AUTUMN 124 PONY ROCK 126 THE FARM 127 ELEVEN 130 COOK COUNTY 132 MEMORIAL RAIN 134 TOURIST DEATH 137 WAY-STATION 139 CHARTRES 140 EPISTLE TO LEON-PAUL FARGUB 141 LANDS END 143 REPROACH TO DEAD POETS 149 SIGNATURE FOR TEMPO 151 NOCTURNE 153 MEN 155 SELENE AFTERWARDS 157 EPISTLE TO BE LEFT IN THE EARTH 159 AMERICAN LETTER 161 INVOCATION TO THE SOCIAL MUSE 166 LINES FOR AN INTERMENT 169 FRESCOES 171 1933 186 CONQUISTADOR 195 POEMS 1924-1933 POEMS 1924-1933 THE HAMLET OF A. MAcLEISH No man living but has seen the king his fathers ghost. None alive that have had words with it. Nevertheless the knowledge of ill is among us and the obligation to revenge, and the natural world is convicted of that enormity. . . In the old time men spoke and were answered and the thing was done clean in the daylight. Now it is not so. 1 FROM these night fields and waters do men raise, Sailors from ship, sleepers from their bed, Elsinore. - r i 11 i . i i . A i A platform Born, mortal men and haunted with brief days, fojore Hie Their eyes to that vast silence overhead. castie. They see the moon walk slowly in her ways And the grave stars and all the dark outspread. They raise their mortal eyelids from this ground Question it... What art thou... And no sound. 2 Ha, but the sun among us... a Ha, but the great sun Shouts in the shouldering leaves and the grasshoppers Scatter before him. Ho, but his brass Voice is the voice of the beater of horses... ... Read more

Product Description
Three weeks after the death of Archibald MacLeish in April 1982, the Archibald MacLeish Symposium, initiated to pay tribute to the poet, playwright and critic on his 90th birthday, was held at Greenfield Community College. This book contains the proceedings of that event and is the only collection of criticism by major scholars on the poet's work. Among the forty people who speak on these pages are not only scholars and poets like William Heyen, Donald Hall, Judson Jerome, Richard Wilbur, Robert Penn Warren, but also respected and well-known statesmen like John Kenneth Galbraith, Edward Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Other well-known Americans such as Charles Kuralt, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Henry Steele Commager are also represented. ... Read more

Product Description
Archibald MacLeish: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography is the only complete compilation of material by and about Archibald MacLeish, one of America's most accomplished literary artists whose long, prodigious, and often controversial career spanned almost the entire twentieth century. A poet, playwright, and essayist, he wrote for "Fortune" magazine for nine years, served in several government positions including Librarian of Congress, and was a tenured professor at Harvard University. From such a lengthy and often controversial period of productivity, it is to be expected that material by and about him woud be voluminous--and such is the case. This bibliography contains 2,339 entries in eight chapters grouped by type of publication. Many of the entries are annotated and cross-referenced. Includes an introduction, a section on how to use the book, and extensive indexes. ... Read more