Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happ... -Archibald MacLeish

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

Archibald MacLeish , Poet
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About Author

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, playwright, and writer. He served as the Librarian of Congress and was known for his thoughtful and lyrical poetry. MacLeish's works often addressed existential questions and explored themes of human experience, history, and the power of language. His contributions to American literature earned him numerous awards and accolades.

Archibald MacLeish Quotes to Explore

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it i...
Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world....
Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weig...
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice....
There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American D...
Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man....
There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience....

Poetry Quotes to Explore

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up t...
I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now....
I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry....
However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propell...
And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so....
And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it....
All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous be...
Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry....
Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be relate...
In my opinion, the most significant works of the twentieth century are those that rise beyond the conceptual tyranny of genre; they are, at the same t...