Ars Poetica

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.

"ARS POETICA” by ARCHIBALD MacLEISH: analysis

The subject of "Ars Poetica" is the art of poetry and the nature of poems. The elevated diction of the Latin title connotes philosophical seriousness and: great scholarship. Indeed, the title is borrowed from a treatise r. written by the Roman poet Horace (65—8 b.c). The title is partly ironic. Although the poem treats the nature of poetry quite seriously, it is certainly not a scholarly essay.

"Ars Poetica" represents an attempt to define and describe poetry. It does so in two ways: it tells us and it shows us what a poem should be. The poem’s central idea is found in the third section, where the speaker asserts that "A poem should be equal to: / Not true" and that "A poem should not mean / But be." In other words, a poem should embody an experience that is parallel to reality rather than simply convey a specific idea or truth. Does this mean that a poem should have no theme? Not really although this may appear to be the point of "Ars Poetica" at first. Rather, the poem asserts that the total experience of a poem is more important and valuable than any single stated idea it might relate.

The first section of "Ars Poetica" tells us that a poem should be “mute”(line 1), "dumb" (line 3), "silent" (line 5), and "wordless" (line 7). This appears to be a paradox; poems are obviously made of words. The poem goes on, however, in this section to show us exactly what "wordless" means. Thus, each two-line stanza contains a simile that makes both the meaning and the experience of wordless or silent existence clear. The four comparisons—to "globed fruit," "old medallions," "sleeve-worn stone”, and " flights of birds"—present images of silence that we can recreate and experience in our minds.

A closer look at one of these similes shows how it evokes the state of “wordless” silence with words. Lines 5 and 6 assert that a poem should be “ silent as the sleeve-worn stone / Of casement ledges where the moss has grown". The image begins as a cliche: "as quiet or as still as a stone." But the poet breathes new life into the cliche by particularizing the stone, is "sleeve-worn," worn down by the friction of many people's arms over hundreds of years. It is also the stone of a "casement ledge" or windowsill “where the moss has grown." This focusing of the image of the stone expands our sense of silence by adding overtones of elapsed time, slow erosion, and quiet natural growth. The image embodies not only and the feeling and idea of silence, but also a state of being that we can experience. This brings us back to perhaps the most important word in the first section of the poem: palpable (line 1), which means easily seen, heard, perceived, or felt. This section of the poem suggests that a poem cannot simply be words; it must be a process that unites reader and in an emotional, sensual, and intellectual experience.

The second section of the poem (lines 9—16) also defines an aspect of poetry and begins with what appears to be a paradox: "A poem should be motionless in time / As the moon climbs." How can something be "motionless" and "climb" (or move) at the same time? The answer lies in the way we experience the moon and poetry. The moon becomes both the central image and symbol here. The moon appears to be motionless; yet over the course of an entire night it does move, rising in the east, crossing the heavens, and setting in the west. "Motionless," like "wordless," has more to do with the way we perceive and experience things than it does with actuality. The image thus emphasizes the parallel between poetry and our experience of time, motion, and the moon.

Here, as in the first section, the poem offers two similes that clarify the way we experience motionless movement in time and in poetry. The two middle stanzas compare the effect of moonlight on the landscape to the effect of poetry on the reader; just as moonlight "releases" the shadows of the trees "twig by twig," so the poem should leave the mind "memory by memory," evoking timeless responses and experiences in us. This process of timeless and motionless experience in poetry is also illustrated in structure of this middle section. The lines that open the section also close it. Thus, the beginning and the end are identical; we end up where we started. MacLeish employs repetition to make concrete the experience of motionless and timeless processes in poetry.

The poem offers two more sets of symbols as examples of the way poetry creates experience. The first example suggests that "all the history of grief" may be symbolized by "An empty doorway and a maple leaf” (lines 19-20). The second symbolizes "love" by "The leaning grasses two lights above the sea" (line 22). The "empty doorway" suggests that someone is gone, missing, dead; "doorway" presupposes presence movement, but "empty" conveys absence. In a like manner, the "maple leaf" implies seasonal change and death. The symbols create experience parallel to grief and love. More important, however, they illustrate the importance of symbolism as a vehicle for meaning.

These symbols embody a key concept for poetry: provide the concrete. detail to evoke the experience of the abstract whole. This is one of the processes of poetry; this is the way imagery, simile, and symbol work in the poem and in the reader. "Ars Poetica" is not "mute." It asserts that poems should create a "palpable" experience that parallels (but is not the same as) life. And as this poem illustrates, that experience is created through imagery, comparison, and symbolism. The poem also makes it clear that the experience is more important than either the words that crate it or the words evoked in the reader by it. In that sense, a poem is "mute" and “wordless”; its experience and value derive from the experience it offers us.