Archibald MacLeish never truly set out to be a poet. At Yale, MacLeish was a very scholared student as well as an athlete. In his junior year, he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society where he began writing poetry and short stories. This is when MacLeish knew he had the abilities for poetry. He published his works in the Yale Literary Magazine, and he won the Yale University Prize for Poetry in 1915 (MacLeish 2).
             After graduation, MacLeish enrolled at Harvard Law School. According to MacLeish this is where his education truly began. While at Harvard, MacLeish went through intensive study of law. He was exposed to a lot more hard work and diversity while in law school. However, MacLeish would spend a short time at Harvard.
             Due to WWI MacLeish temporarily suspended his studies and left to serve as an ambulance driver. MacLeish did not enjoy the role as an ambulance driver, so he soon transferred to active duty and became an artillery captain. While serving, his old English professors at Yale published his first volume of poetry (2). Still serving in the war MacLeish learned of his brother's death. This event inspired many of his poems (2). After the war he returned to Yale, not Harvard, to finish his law degree. He graduated class valedictorian. He taught institutional and constitutional law at Harvard for a year and then made a final decision concerning his future.
             In 1923 he decided to pursue a full-time career as a poet. MacLeish associated with many of the writers who were to revolutionize twentieth-century-literature (2). People including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound all greatly influenced MacLeish. MacLeish was a perfectionist. All of his pieces had to be perfect. MacLeish is "one of his generation's most promising poets," (2). He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1939 MacLeish was appointed the position of the Librarian of the Congress, by Pres...