"Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish, May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982, was an American poet who wrote "Ars Poetica" in 1926 as a tribute and interpretation of Horace's poem, "Ars Poetica." Graduating first in his class from Yale and Harvard, MacLeish went on to serve in Wold War I. After this, he became the Librarian of Congress who has the power to choose the U.S. Poet Laureate. He then worked as a college professor and, by the end of his life, had accumulated three Pulitzer Awards recognizing him as a writer and a poet.

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.

In the original “Ars Poetica,” Horace goes into great detail about the different aspects of poetry and how poems should be written. This work is 476 lines of Horace teaching the reader how to properly write poetry in his opinion. Archibald MacLeish takes the concept of what Horace is trying to convey and puts his own personal touch on it. In his short, twenty-four line poem, MacLeish avoids telling the reader about all of the different traditional structures poetry should include. Instead, he emphasizes the effect poetry should have on a reader. He does not talk about what the poem should include in a literal sense, but rather he states how it should feel in the figurative sense.


Throughout the poem, MacLeish compare poetry to fruit, coins, ledges, birds flying, and the moon in the form of similes. By comparing poetry to so many vastly different objects, MacLeish shows that every poem should be and will be unique. He wants poetry to be eternal and “be motionless in time.” The only way to achieve this is to withdraw from writing poems with meaning and try to write them to include feeling. He wants poetry to be something that conveys more than just a message. In the last two lines, he writes, “A poem should not mean/But be.” By saying this, MacLeish is instructing poets to, instead of writing poetry about a lesson that might become irrelevant with time, write poetry to evoke emotions that are timeless.