Arkansas State press. [volume] (Little Rock, Ark.) 1941-1959, 1941-10-31

> News For Youth

Mrs. Paulyne Sims Puryear
- ~
WHO'S WHO IN TIE NEWS
Archibald MacLeish Is Not First
Poet to Hold Down Government
Job. but He Has Two Posts, One
In Defense Setup
Special Correspondent
NEW YORK-William Cullen
Bryant once engaged in a fist
fight in City Hall Park with James
Gordon Bennett, as the culmina-
ton Of a violent political argu-
ment. Others of our poets have
occasionally mixed in politics, held
political jobs or died in battle, but
the tradition has held that they
are clustered folk, not to be TAX
en- too seriously in matters of any
treat MON mt.
Archibald MacLeish, one of the
best Of contemporary American
poets and librarian of Congress,
has been asked to accept the ad-
ministration of the new Washing
, ton agency called the Office of
Facts and Figures. He and his
agency will try to get reason, If
not rime, into the daily outpouring
of unrelated and sometimes con-
Trajectory statistics of national de-
Tense and foreign policies. In IN
venaPs line. "That peel seems
to be capable of walking a tight
rope all with the power of
a magician"
Poets in Politics
There was quite a buzz of op-
position throughout the county
when MacLeish was made librarian
Of Congress three years ago, There
was, however, some precedent for
poets in government jobs and in
politics as well as on the firing
line. There was Eugene Ware, to-
pical versifier, who held down a
good job in the pension department
about 30 years ago and did it we'll
Then there was shaggy old Walt
Whitman in the same department
at a time when the government
seemed to need tight-rope walk
ers and magiciars, to say nothing
of poets, even more than it does
now.
General William Haines Lytle
was poet and politician--the au-
thor of ~ Am Dying. Egypt, Dy-
ing" of schoolboy recitation fame,
and a candidate for Lieutenant
Governor Of Ohio in 1857 He be-
came a colonel Of the 10th Ohio
Volunteers. and died Leading a.
charge at Chicks manga. AS to
poets in general coming down
from their ivory tower to aid in
their country, there may be cited
John McRac, who wrote "Flanders
Field" Joyce kilm'r and Rupert
Brooke. Each gave his life in the
last World War.
Dcmocracy's Champion
MacLaish, like his predecessor,
Eugene Ware, somewhat of a topi-
cal versifier, put a much better
poet He Is topical in that he
frankly teams up poetry and
propaganda-always for demo-
cracy as faith and not as an
institution.
In this connection there is a
pertinent literary antithesis to be
noted in what Matthew Arnold
thought about the American de-
mccracy and it's chance to pull
through and what MacLeish
thought and did about Arnold's
misglvings. This exchange across
the decades gathers interest from
the fact that without venturing
any comparative appraisal Of the
two men MS poets MacLeish may
be put down as an American Mat
hew Arnold. making "brave tran
lunary things" out of what might
otherwise be passing journalese.
Arnold also had a government job
Played Football at Yale
In Yale in 1911 young Mac
Leish was center on the football
team, n good line-bucker and de-
fensive player. Leaving Uncle
Billy Phelps class in literature
on his graduation in 1915, he wat
grooved into a business career b,
his parents and was surprisingl,
good at that, too, for a born poet
Disregnrding his parents warning
that there were mo gold mine