Eli Siegel (August 16, 1902 – November 8, 1978) was a poet, critic, and educator. He founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality has something in common with all other things—was expressed in the title poem of his first volume, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. His second volume was Hail, American Development. Siegel's philosophic works include Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism, Definitions, and Comment: Being a Description of the World, and The Aesthetic Nature of the World. His teaching of Aesthetic Realism spanned almost four decades and included thousands of extemporaneous lectures on poetry, the arts and sciences, religion, economics, and national ethics, as well as lessons to individuals and general classes which showed that questions of everyday life are aesthetic and ethical. His lecture on the poetry of William Carlos Williams, which Williams attended, is published in The Williams-Siegel Documentary and his lectures on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw were edited into a critical consideration titled James and the Children. Siegel's philosophy, and his statement, "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites", has influenced artists, scientists, and educators. Life Born in Dvinsk, Russian Empire, Siegel emigrated to the United States in 1905 with his parents, Mendel and Sarah (Einhorn) Siegel. The family settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where Siegel attended Baltimore City College and joined the speech and debate team now referred to as the Bancroft/Carrollton-Wight Literary Societies. He contributed to the senior publication The Green Bag and graduated in 1919. In 1922, together with V.F. Calverton [George Goetz], he co-founded The Modern Quarterly, a magazine in which his earliest essays appeared, including "The Scientific Criticism" (Vol. I, No. 1, March 1923) and "The Equality of Man" (Vol. I, No. 3, December 1923). In 1925, his "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" was selected from four thousand anonymously submitted poems as the winner of The Nation's esteemed poetry prize. The magazine's editors described it as "the most passionate and interesting poem which came in—a poem recording through magnificent rhythms a profound and important and beautiful vision of the earth on which afternoons and men have always existed." The poem begins: Quiet and green was the grass of the field, The sky was whole in brightness, And O, a