ABSTRACT

T homas McGrath spent his entire career wrestling with thevexing problem of poetry and politics, and his sustained leftwing beliefs have largely led critics to ignore his work. Although the work of this North Dakota-born poet is clearly modernist, lyrical, topical, and at times intensely moving, his reputation suffered from the pervasive critical belief that after 1939 any writer committed to left-wing issues was either a Stalinist or an anachronism. This perception was exacerbated during the difficult early years of the Cold War, and its legacy remained with McGrath until his death in 1990.