Ars Poetica 11/2

“Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish

           Archibald MacLeish was born in Illinois in 1892. He studied at Yale and Harvard Law School and began writing poetry during his time there. After WWI, MacLeish worked as a lawyer in Boston but resigned to focus his time on writing. He moved to France in 1923, wrote poetry, and befriended any other famous poets. From 1930 to 1938, MacLeish worked as an editor at Fortune magazine and spent his time writing works to warn Americans about fascism. He spent his later years working as the Librarian of Congress, director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures, and as Harvard’s Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. MacLeish died in 1982 with an Academy Award and three Pulitzer Prizes under his belt. 

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.              

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.        

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be. 

                        MacLeish’s poem “Ars Poetica” exemplifies for the reader exactly what poetry should and should not be, and how poems should convey their message. MacLeish’s use of many metaphors and vivid illustrations yet simple language help him achieve this. However, “Ars Poetica” is backwards in its nature in the sense that MacLeish’s main idea can be summed up in the last line, “A poem should not mean / But be.” A poem needs to be more than just descriptive metaphors placed sporadically on a piece of paper; it needs depth and meaning. However, on top of meaning, a poem’s message needs to be understood by the reader. That is what MacLeish illustrates in the beginning of the poem.

He uses the first stanza as an extended metaphor that explains what a poem should be. MacLeish gives visual examples such as “palpable and mute,” meaning that a poem needs to be tangible and easily felt by everyone. Additionally, at the end of this stanza, MacLeish says that a poem should be like a flight of birds, in the sense that it is naturally and effortlessly beautiful in its simplicity. In the second stanza, MacLeish says that a poem should “be motionless in time.” This means that not only should it be felt by everyone, but it also needs to be felt by every generation. MacLeish is saying that the best poetry can apply to anyone in any time period, even if the message is slightly different. 

"Ars Poetica" is written in a unique way and MacLeish truly exemplifies what he is saying in his poem. By saving his message for the end and elaborating on it in the beginning, he is able to close out the poem by coming full circle and help the reader fully understand his message.