Books: A Poet for the People

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It was hardly accidental that J.B.'s salvation was manifested in the return of his wife to "blow on the coal of the heart." MacLeish had been married since 1916 to Ada Hitchcock, his childhood sweetheart in Glencoe, Ill. (She survives him, as do two children, nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.) Ada also dominates MacLeish's last book of poems, The Wild Old Wicked Man (1968). "Ah, but a good wife!" he wrote. "To lie late in a warm bed/ (warm where she was), with your life/ suspended like a music in the head."

Such verses prompted some critics to conclude that MacLeish's talent had never been an epic one. "He is, and always has been, poet," an wrote engaging Hilton and often Kramer of the moving lyric New York Times. But MacLeish lived in a time of desperate battles, and it must be said to his credit that when the trumpets sounded, the poet answered.

—By Otto Friedrich