Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish’s imagist idea of art for art's sake is expressed in the poem 'Ars Poetica'.
The poem
is about the art of poetry or what a poem should be. It is interesting to note that as MacLeish states what
a poem should be, he illustrates it as well, in the poem by successfully using paradoxes/contradictions
and images to convey the idea that good poetry uses powerful images. The poem is divided into three
sections of eight lines each with four rhyming couplets.
In the first section, he insists that a poem should be 'silent', dumb' or wordless. This seems contradictory
or paradoxical as a poem uses words and is not silent. However, what he intends is the imagist concept
of art, namely being brief and being direct. This is achieved through using the right words and right
images which appeal to the reader’s senses of touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste. To convey this he
has used the image of fruit that can be tasted or directly felt without the need for words/explanations. Also
'globed fruit' indicates the universality of the senses indicating that sensual images transcend individual
cultures and time. Medallions are dumb to the feel of the thumb yet the image of medallions that
commemorate past events recalls to memory the emotive past. Similarly, the silent image of 'sleeve worn
stone of casement ledges’ evokes the sense of touch and along with it nostalgic memories of someone
waiting and looking out by the window. Finally, the image of the soundless flight of birds touches the
sense of sight. There is action yet it is a silent action. So too should a poem be: it should speak silently,
which means, a poem doesn’t brashly convey a message or meaning but should evoke
emotion/experience and impel imagination through images/words.
In the second section, he uses the image of the moon to state that a poem should be 'motionless in time'
like the moon. The moon moves but its movement can not be easily perceived. So should poetry be. This
could mean that good poems transcend time since they speak of universal experience. Yet each poem is
rooted in the concrete i.e. in real, particular experience. What make them universal are the images used
and the emotions evoked. Again, the poet uses imagery to illustrate the point. A poem leave
memories/emotions/feelings in our mind just like the rising moon. Its imperceptible, incremental
movement releases with its light, twig by twig the trees entangled by darkness and with continuous rising
leaves the winter behind.
The third section seems to refute the idea that art is a search for truth as echoed in Keats' line 'beauty is
truth, truth beauty'. For the poet, 'a poem should be equal to: not true'. Poetry is not concerned with the
generalities of truth, beauty, goodness or historical facts. On the contrary what it should do is to capture
human experience like an experience of grief, or of love, or of loneliness through images. As in the other
two sections he uses images to illustrate the point. He uses the images of an 'empty doorway' or 'a maple
leaf' to suggest the universal experience and history of grief and the images of ‘the leaning grasses and
two lights above the sea' to evoke the experience of love. The last couplet 'a poem should not mean but
be' seems to re-echo the imagist principle of art for art’s sake and poetry as capturing life using precise
images that achieve clarity of expression. Poetry should not try to take on great unanswerable
philosophical questions or convey some meaning/message. Instead good poetry should use concrete
images to capture and evoke a moment of personal experience to take in the richness of being.
Figures of Speech
Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem:
Simile: Lines 1-8 use like or as to compare a poem to a globed fruit, old medallions, the stone of
casement ledges, and a flight of birds.
Alliteration: Line 5 repeats the s sound. (Silent as the sleeve-worn stone.)
Paradox: Lines 9-16 suggest that a poem should be motionless, like a climbing moon. Obviously, climbing
indicates motion. However, the figure of speech is apt: A climbing moon appears motionless when it is
observed at any given moment.
Metaphor: Lines 9-16 compare the "motionless" poem by implication to universality, the property of a
literary work that makes it relevant for people of all ages and cultures. (See "Structure and Content" for
further comment.
Metaphor: Line 12 compares night to an object that can snare or capture.
Repetend (Anaphora): The phrase a poem should be occurs five times in the poem.
Notes
1. Line 1—as well as lines 3, 5, and 7—focus on inarticulation: A poem should
be . . . mute . . .dumb . . . silent . . . wordless. Here. MacLeish seems to be saying that a poem
should not crassly announce what it is about. Rather, like the smell of spices wafting from a
restaurant, it should merely suggest.
2. Use of globed rather than round enhances euphony while also suggesting largeness. Perhaps the
object is a melon or grapefruit
3. Medallions are large medals. The adjective old suggests that the medallions have stories behind
them—about war or athletic accomplishments, for example.
4. One can imagine here a man or woman from a time past propping sleeved arms or elbows on a
ledge while he or she looks out the window on a scene of interest. If the stone ledge could speak,
what tale would it tell about the observer and the observed?
5. The "wordless birds" can only suggest what occupies them by the direction of their flight or, in the
case of vultures, their circular motion.
6. If a poem has universality and timelessness, it can move from one moment to the next, or from
one age to another, while its relevance remains fixed ("motionless"). Thus, like the moon traveling
across the sky, a good poem seems to stand still at any given moment—as if it were meant for
that moment. Its content remains fresh and alive to each reader down through the years, down
through the centuries.
7. Lines 15 and 16 repeat lines 9 and 10, creating a frame for the imagery in lines 11-14.
8. A poem is not a newspaper account, an essay, or a historical document. It is a work of the
imagination; it discovers truth by presenting impressions and interpretations, not hard facts.
9. A poem can concentrate an entire story into an image. Here, the empty doorway suggests the
absence of a person who once stood in it—a mother, for example, as she greets a son or
daughter. But now the mother is gone, and the gloom of autumn (suggested by the fallen leaf)
has replaced the bright cheer of summer.
10. Here is one interpretation: After death separated two lovers, the cemetery grass grew tall
and now leans against a tombstone. Like the two lights in the sky, the sun and the moon, the two
lovers will remain forever apart.

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Archibald MacLeish’s imagist idea of art for art's sake is expressed in the poem 'Ars Poetica'.

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