SOURCE: Siegel, Robert. Review of New and Collected Poems, 1917-1976, by Archibald MacLeish. Poetry 130, no. 2 (May 1977): 102-14.

In the following excerpted review of New and Collected Poems, 1917-1976, Siegel forms a list of MacLeish's most enduring works of poetry.

The New and Collected Poems of Archibald MacLeish contains 493 pages of poetry chosen from eighteen volumes (not including the dramas) and covering fifty-nine years of a career practically coeval with the modern period. MacLeish has been involved with nearly every phase of American poetic and political life of that period. Every high school junior (at least before the scores declined) puzzled over “Ars Poetica” and the meaning of the famous lines, “A poem should not mean / But be.” What is a reviewer to do besides celebrate such an event?

To begin, he may remind the reader of the obvious: MacLeish is often, if not consistently, the most brilliant of...