SOURCE: Smith, Grover. “Archibald MacLeish.” In Seven American Poets from MacLeish to Nemerov: An Introduction, edited by Denis Donoghue, pp. 16-54. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975.

In the following excerpt, Smith offers an in-depth survey of MacLeish's poetry from his earliest verse to 1968's The Wild Old Wicked Man, focusing principally on subject and theme.

… When MacLeish assembled his Collected Poems 1917-1952, he conformed to usual practice in suppressing most of the early work; but as one examines the early poems they are seen to relate, in various and sometimes contradictory ways, to his mature verse. The first volumes, Songs for a Summer's Day (1915) and Tower of Ivory (1917), display a lively interest in verse forms as such. The former contains sonnets only; but the latter includes, as well, a number of stanzaic exercises and one precocious dramatic piece, “Our Lady of Troy” (which, despite a Swinburnean promise in...