Three weeks after the death of Archibald MacLeish in April 1982, the Archibald MacLeish Symposium, initiated to pay tribute to the poet, playwright and critic on his 90th birthday, was held at Greenfield Community College. This book contains the proceedings of that event and is the only collection of criticism by major scholars on the poet's work. Among the forty people who speak on these pages are not only scholars and poets like William Heyen, Donald Hall, Judson Jerome, Richard Wilbur, Robert Penn Warren, but also respected and well-known statesmen like John Kenneth Galbraith, Edward Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Other well-known Americans such as Charles Kuralt, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Henry Steele Commager are also represented.