Themes and meaning

Although MacLeish was originally strongly influenced by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, he later
came to believe their scholastic poetry was not relevant to society. He turned to the poets of
the past, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, as examples of
how modern poets should make it their duty to participate in the social and political issues of
the day.

“Ars Poetica,” however, seems more clearly influenced by MacLeish’s reverence for
Chinese poetry. In Poetry and Experience, he quotes extensively from the third century
Chinese poet Lu Chi and his famous poem, the Wên Fu Essay on Literature. He asserts that
“Far more than either Aristotle or Horace, Lu Chi speaks to our condition as contemporary
men.” In Chinese poetry, relationships are left to be inferred from the context, from the logic
of the situation. MacLeish believed that the skill of the Chinese as image makers in paint,
ink, or words has never been equaled.

In “Ars Poetica” he tries to capture an uncomplicated and direct path to the heart. Each of
the couplets can almost be seen as a separate Chinese painting, drawn quickly and
masterfully with the sparest of strokes. In particular, the quirky fourth couplet stands out. Its
arrhythmic, atonal lines (“A poem should be wordless/ As the flight of birds”) not only shows
MacLeish’s belief that a poem transcends the words of which it is composed but also
includes the image of birds in flight, one that is seen repeatedly in Chinese art and poetry. It
is a strong archetypal symbol for freedom, including freedom from the common words and
meanings that bind all of humankind. The fourth couplet’s break in rhythm from the previous
three seems to echo this freedom.

In every word of this poem, MacLeish strives for such simplicity and passion, almost as if
he were creating an extended haiku. Lu Chi writes “We poets struggle with Non-being to
force it to yield Being;/ We knock upon silence for an answering music.” MacLeish
elaborates on this in the following passage: “The poet’s labor is to struggle with the
meaningless and silence of the world until he can force it to mean: until he can make the
silence answer and the non-Being BE. It is a labor which undertakes to know the world not
by exegesis or demonstration or proofs but directly, as a man knows apple in the mouth.”

It is futile to spend too much time attempting to extract meaning from a poem which has as
its basic tenet the idea that a poem does not mean, but simply exists. MacLeish maintains
that the art of poetry is a magic one and that the poet is a magician who extracts substance
from non substance. He often cites Lu Chi’s belief that the poet is one who “traps Heaven
and Earth in the cage form.”
Analysis

“Ars Poetica” is a short poem in free verse, its twenty-four lines divided into three stanzas of
four couplets each. The Latin title may be translated as “art of poetry,” “art of poetics,” or
“poetic art.” Using the poetic form, the author attempts to portray his concept of the “art of
poetry.” For this reason, “Ars Poetica” is often used as an example of what (and how) a
poem “should be.”

The poem uses loosely rhymed couplets to project the author’s powerful images. A dash
follows every third couplet, emphasizing the importance of the fourth couplet in summing up
the stanza. In the beginning, MacLeish draws the reader in with three couplets that compare
a poem to various physical objects and which seem perfect in both word and cadence.
These similes appear to illustrate the author’s belief that a poem must be silent in its clarity,
transcending words themselves. In the final couplet of the first stanza, he repeats the phrase
“A poem should be.” While the first six lines describe objects in repose, the last couplet both
ties together and climaxes the building images by sending the reader upward in the rush of
birds taking to the sky.

In the second stanza, the poem becomes more specific, using the stark image of branches
silhouetted against a moon to denote the eternal quality of a poem. MacLeish repeats the
first couplet in the last two lines: “A poem should be motionless in time/ As the moon climbs.”
Though the juxtaposition of a climbing moon with the assertion of motionlessness seems
contradictory, the middle two couplets explain his thinking. The second couplet likens the
hypothetical poem to the twigs that, once impressed on the mind in their vision of black
“night-entangled trees” against the bright moon, remain fixed there as the moon moves. In
the third couplet MacLeish becomes even more specific, asking the reader to recall the
memories brought to mind by such an image and to compare them to a poem that is as
firmly anchored in time as those memories.

The poem’s third stanza departs from the previous two in its tone as MacLeish becomes
bolder in his assertion of what a poem “should be.” In the middle two couplets, he takes the
reader on a journey through all of humankind’s strife and love with only a few strokes of his
metaphorical pen. Yet in his first and last couplets, he abandons image and states precisely
his feelings about the art of poetry. The final two lines, “A poem should not mean/ But be,”
are brief and to the point, having an almost Zenlike quality to them. The words bring the
reader to a place of simple rest after an emotive passage through the more esoteric images
of the poem. These last two lines of “Ars Poetica” are famous and are often quoted in books
on poetry.
In a sense, “Ars Poetica” must be in its entirety a metaphor for poetry itself; when it is pulled
apart piece by piece, one can see the clever construction that pushes the reader along to an
inevitable conclusion. As MacLeish wrote in his Poetry and Experience (1960), “If the
fragments of experience are in truth parts of a whole, and if the relation of the parts to each
other and thus to the whole can in truth be seen, sensed, felt in the fragments themselves,
then there is meaning in that seeing, in that sensing, in that feeling—extraordinary meaning.”

The best poetry needs only a few words to engage readers’ imaginations and to make them
participants in the poem’s creation. In “Ars Poetica” MacLeish employs similes to evoke the
reader’s senses. The couplet “A poem should be palpable and mute/ As a globed fruit”
allows the reader to imagine the fruit—perhaps an apple lying on a bench in the late
afternoon sun. It is beautiful yet silent. The next two lines employ the sense of touch. It is
easy to conjure up the feeling of rubbing a metal medallion, noting its worn ridges and
wondering about its history. Again, in the third couplet, the reader relates to the person
suggested by “the sleeve-worn stone.” Someone (or perhaps generations of people) has
leaned for long hours on the window ledge, waiting, perhaps hoping for a lover or watching
anxiously for a child. With similes such as this, the reader is able to fill in the spaces, to
embroider the words with his or her own experiences, thus creating a poem unique with
each reading.

Note, too, the careful placing of words to make rolling, alliterative sounds: “palpable,”
“mute,” “globed,” “fruit.” In the second couplet, the words “dumb,” “old,” “medallions,” and
“thumb” carry the reader along, as do the phrases in the third couplet. In the second stanza,
the similes employ repetitive sounds. The first and last couplets seem almost to murmur with
their preponderance of soft words using the letter 'm'. In the second couplet, the line “Twig
by twig the night-entangled trees” uses the harsher 't' sound to portray a certain amount of
conflict.

In the last stanza metaphor takes center stage. An empty doorway and a maple leaf
symbolize “all the history of grief.” More obscure, perhaps, is the line “The leaning grasses
and two lights above the sea,” denoting love. Again, the reader must fill in his or her own
experience. As Robert Frost said, “Poetry begins in metaphor, in trivial metaphors, and goes
on to the profoundest thinking that we have.”

A poem should not mean, But be

Context: "Ars Poetica," stating the dictum of the new critics, an organic theory of poetry,
through a number of similes leads up to the inevitable statement that a poem should be, not
mean. "A poem should be wordless/ As the flight of birds." It is not merely a speaking agent
but a self-contained power, autonomous in nature. The poet compares a poem to the
motionless climb of the moon which, slowly, imperceptibly rising, leaves the forest
silhouetted against the sky. Comparably, the poem with an imperceptible artistry works its
natural effect upon the mind. It calls attention to memory by memory as the moon discovers
twig by twig of the silhouetted trees. A poem is an experience which stands on an equal
footing with other experiences. "A poem should be equal to:/ Not true." A poem should be.

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.

Paraphrase

Ars Poetica” is a term that means the art of poetry or the nature of poetry. The art of poetry
refers to what makes poetry different from other types of writing. The nature of poetry refers
to the ways poetry is different from prose in its expression of meaning. Since Ars Poetica is
about how poetry works, an Ars Poetica poem is a poem about poetry. This would be like
writing a song about a song or writing a book about writing. Archibald MacLeish’s poem,
aptly titled “Ars Poetica,” is an example of an Ars Poetica poem because it is his poetic
description of what a poem should be. He notes that a poem should transcend its words (“be
wordless”). The poem ends with the often quoted.

A poem should not mean

But be.

In transcending words, and being silent and free as a flight of birds, MacLeish’s view is that a
poem is equal to a natural, meaningful event or image; not just a representation of words
and phrases.

1. In Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica,” explain the symbolic significance of

one couplet as related to the art of poetry.

The Latin word ars is translated variously as stratagem, technique, art, craft. MacLeish's
poem title "Ars Poetica" can be translated loosely as "The Art of the Poet." This is a
strangely contradictory poem because even as MacLeish claims that a poem should be
silent ("dumb") and "palpable" (tangible, plainly touched) and equal to no meaning ("Not
true"; "not mean"), he is clearly presenting a poem that means a great deal: It presents his
poetic aesthetics, his art of poetics, and his philosophy of the definitive nature of poetry. So,
while his couplet metaphors and similes are gracefully poetic as well as ironically
contradictory, they belie his message though they don't negate the obviousness and the
import of his message. ("Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice.) Perhaps he means to imply
that a true poem lies in the majesty of nature and that a written poem is only an inept
imitation.
Consideration of one couplet, "A poem should be wordless / As the flight of birds," points
out the obvious contradiction and, incidentally, supports the idea of the theme of a true poem
of nature and an imitation poem of words. By virtue of the nature of written language, a
poem read by readers must contain words. This ironically contradictory couplet may relate to
his art of poetry in that it suggests he takes his poetic inspiration from that which is wordless,
such as "the flight of birds." In that case, in support of the idea of true and imitative poems, it
would be correct to say that a true poem is, in his philosophy of poetic aesthetics, found in
nature.
Another couplet is also contradictory but more easily applied to the art of poetics: "A poem
should be motionless in time / As the moon climbs." The ironic contradiction lies in the fact
that the moon climbing in the horizon is not "motionless in time" as observed by one viewer.
However if considered over a vast time, for example all of poetic history, then the moon
might metaphorically be considered "motionless" because it has climbed the horizon in all
eras, from the time of the poets who spoke "The Wanderer" to the time of Spenser's Amoretti
to MacLeish's time, which ties in with the couplet's application to poetics. A poem is meant to
be an immortal thing, as has been agreed by poets since time immortal, that brings poetic
revelation to all ages such that it is "motionless in time."

Incidentally, the Aristotelian poetic, also described by Sir Philip Sydney, is that a poem is a
divinely inspired imitation of God's spiritual truth that the hearts of humans desire to know
but can't attain except through poetic inspiration. This parallels the idea of a true poem of
nature and an imitative poem of words suggested by MacLeish's poem. The difference being
that for earlier poets the inspiration and true poem was God's spiritual truth while for
MacLeish it is nature.

2. What is the poem's dominant figure of speech? Why does the author compare
poetry to fruit to medallions to casement ledges and the flight of birds?

one critic states that the reader encounters didacticism in the guise of ars gratia artis. That
is, the reader is instructed while the poet gratuitously provides a poem at the same time
The poem's dominant metaphor is its controlling metaphor: a poem is a timeless, infinite
work of the imagination. That is, the poem is a metaphor for poetry itself. In comparing a
poem to the objects that he does, MacLeish creates the metaphor of universality and
timeless essence. For instance, in the first stanza, the speaker suggests with the use of the
images of fruit, medallions, stone, and the flight of birds, that a poem should not boldly
announce what it is; instead, it should suggest meanings.
In the second stanza, the speaker uses the simile of the moon as motionless in time to imply
that a poem, like the moon, is present for whomever reads it at any given time. It is
universal, fresh, alive, and lighted with truth for any given reader at any given time.
And, finally, a poem has meaning for whomever reads it. That is, a poem may have
variances in interpretation and yet be "equal to."

For example,
For all the history of grief,
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

This metaphor expresses grief, but some readers may interpret the empty doorway as the
loss of a loved one, or an opportunity, or someone who once stood in this doorway, such as
a father, who is now gone.
Because it is not confined to such specific ideas as a speech, or an essay, or even a novel,
MacLeish contends a poem "should not mean/but be." These last two lines are famous, and
often quoted in anthologies of poetry.

3. How do the similes Archibald MacLeish employs in “Ars Poetica” contribute to

the overall meaning of the poem? How does he make the connection between
existence and meaning through the use of sense experience?

Simile is a compassion between two supposedly unlike things, making an explicit

comparison via the words “like” and “as.” By including multiple similes in Ars Poetica
Archibald MacLeish is possibly putting his theories about poetry into practice. In the poem,
MacLeish expresses his belief that a poem needn’t be a hyper intellectual creation that’s
nearly impossible to grasp. According to “Ars Poetica,” a poem should be “dumb,”
“motionless,” and “equal.”
The use of similes might reinforce the “dumb” quality that MacLeish want for his poems.
Similes tend to be thought of as more simplistic and elementary than other poetic devices,
including the aforementioned metaphor.
Furthermore, similes could help convey the “motionless” meaning of MacLeish’s poem
because similes can be thought of as stills. Unlike metaphors, similes tend to be less active.
A simile typically provides a motionless picture of two things, not a sequence of events.
Finally, similes support the “equal” meaning because similes have a way of making these
two unlike things seem like one another—as if they’re on equal footing. For example,
MacLeish writes: “A poem should be wordless / As the flight of birds.” With this couplet, the
simile brings the poem and the birds together. It turns them into equals.