SOURCE: Walters, Thomas N. “A Look at Selected New Lyric Poems by Archibald MacLeish.” In The Proceedings of the Archibald MacLeish Symposium, May 7-8 1982, edited by Bernard A. Drabeck, Helen E. Ellis, and Seymour Rudin, pp. 28-35. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a speech in 1982, Walters praises MacLeish's mastery of the impassioned and human lyric.

What I mean by love is … the kind of relationship which gives itself in praise and wonder and awe … something that is beyond the reach of the imagination to understand, and … worth believing in.

The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren

In his Poetry and Experience MacLeish quoted from Lu Chi's “Fu” concerning the poet's art, citing these words: “We poets struggle with Non-being to force it to yield Being; / We knock upon silence for an answering music. / We enclose boundless space in...