Archibald MacLeish

Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress
in the Thomas Jefferson Building
image: Carol M. Highsmith
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LOC_Main_Reading_Room_Highsmith.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

When I moved to DC area, I was told by a good friend of mine not to miss the Library of Congress. He repeated this advice each time we were talking by phone. Well, I never find time to do this, in seven years, as I have lived there. Each weekend I was choosing to do a different thing, either hiking (and there are in DC surroundings some great places for hiking), or strolling (and there are some great places to stroll, in DC or in the suburbs), or visiting the great museums there. And I was each weekend postponing the Library of Congress for the next time, till I left the region. It's a shame, I know, but now it's too late to fix it anymore.

Were I to visit the place, I would have learned about Archibald MacLeish sooner than I did. He was one of the most important Librarians of Congress in the history of that institution: among other achievements he was the one who started the rule of annual appointment of a US Poet Laureate.

So I encountered his name later, as I was reading once about the Lost Generation: those American writers who spent some formidable years in Paris in the 20's and then kept the city within their souls for the rest of their lives, like a moveable feast, as Hemingway greatly said. MacLeish has been one of them. I went on looking for more information about him, and I found a fecund poet, essayist, and playwright. I would like to spend some time here with a few fragments from his poems: it would mean having fine time.

• An Eternity
• The End of the World
• Ars Poetica 

(A Life in Books)