Poetry has a greater relevance today than almost ever in the past, Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, said last night, in an Eliot House symposium on the "Poet and Modern Society."

An audience of about 500 heard MacLeish attack the idea "poets never make anything happen." Poetry, he said, is a means that shows an individual himself. The earth today is troubled, MacLeish commented, by the "plight of the individual in an institutionalized world."

1. A. Richards, University Professor, told the symposium that while the conditions for producing poetry have greatly improved, the amount of poetry has seriously decreased. Poetry will return, he said, when the emphasis on science and scholarship is reduced.

The final member of the panel, J. Dougas Bush, professor of English, said that one problem today is that "poets write for other poets" rather than for the public.