As a Yalie, it especially pains me to note the dearth of famous poets to have issued from my own alma mater—this despite the fact that Yale has arguably shaped the canon of contemporary poetry more than any other institution through its sponsoring of the Yale Younger Poets and Bollingen prizes, which recognize poets at the beginning and peak of their careers respectively. Perhaps the most famous poet to earn a Yale degree is Archibald MacLeish, not exactly a name to conjure with today. Ironically, MacLeish was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard in the late forties. As Bly and Hall separately recollect, the rowdy young Turks so antagonized the genteel MacLeish that he canceled classes for the next three years and only met with students individually.

(Back to "Whiz Kids at Eighty (I)" by Roger Gilbert)