“Palpable and mute…”

A Reading of Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica”

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

“Ars Poetica”[1]

The title of Archibald MacLeish’s poem, “Ars Poetica,” suggests that it presents a new poetics; being like all others a systematic theory or doctrine of poetry, defining its nature, forms and technical devices, as well as explaining the principles that govern its craft and distinguish it from other creative activities.

Written in Latin, the title immediately points out to its historicity—its affinity with the classics in this field, such as Aristotle’s fragmentary work peri poihsiV (Peri Poietikès, i.e., On Poetics), and Horace’s Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). Given this historical dimension, the poem is perceived to be, in one way or another, a pursuit of, or a response to, the works of the predecessors.

The reader, therefore, is alerted from the very beginning that what in hand is not a piece of poetry, but rather a piece on poetry — a manifesto or a manual on the art of poetry. The reader is urged, at the same time, to recall other works, which are similar in character, and to read the poem in the light of the entire tradition of poetics.

What, then, are the foundations of this new poetics, and how are they exposed in MacLeish’s poem? The first stanza goes directly to describe one of the main characteristics:     

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 beyond rational expression, which relies on words and sounds. It should be “dumb” and “wordless,” aspiring to communicate with “mute” significance. This does not mean, however, turning the poem into a mere puzzle. If the world of experience can be captured in a poem, can be held still, it should be made visible and sensible. The images of the “globed fruit,” the “old medallions,” and “the flight of birds” are introduced to illustrate the kind of perception the reader can get out of a poem.

The second stanza proceeds a step further to describe another characteristic of what is seen as the ideal poem, and to enhance the previous one:

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled tress

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 beyond rational space-time existence; “motionless in time” as the moon climbing into the sky, even though no eye can mark its passage. The image of the moon climbing unobtrusively behind the trees and moving imperceptibly in the mind evokes the ideas of stillness and eternity. The ideal poem should avoid being a mere sentimental response to human experiences and situations, which are naturally provisional and temporary. Rather, it should aspire to the permanence and timelessness of the cosmic phenomena, suggested by the perpetual motion of the moon. Like the moon, the poem is central to existence, having unique value to the fully recognized life.

The third stanza reveals a new aspect of the art of poetry, explaining in the same didactic tone of the previous lines the kind of images that a poet might use to convey the popular themes of love and grief:

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 gives a picture of life — not the picture that science gives and not the picture that is actually (historically) true — but a picture that has its own kind of truth. The truth offered by poetry takes a form, not of abstract statement, but of a concrete and dramatic representation, which may allow man “to experience imaginatively the lived meanings of a piece of life.”[2] With this end in view, a poem should not try to state what is true , but use symbols which communicate true emotions, such as the symbols of the “empty doorway,” or the “two lights above the sea.”

MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica” concludes with an assertive, yet intriguing, statement:

A poem should not mean

But be.

Taken literally, this aphoristic statement is not only in flat contradiction with the rest of the poem, but it also denies the possibility of formulating any significant definition of the art of poetry. How, for example, can the existence of a poem be justified without a sort of meaning? And more importantly, what is the use of writing a poem so crammed with meanings, like “Ars Poetica,” only to preach the meaninglessness of poetry?

This kind of literal interpretation is obviously on the wrong track, as it brings about more questions than answers. However, another text by MacLeish himself may provide a clue to a deeper understanding of his “Ars Poetica”. Discussing the means to, and the nature of, meaning in poetry, MacLeish argues that      

 …whatever it is we know in [a] poem, we know only in the poem. It is not a knowledge we can extract from the poem like a meat from a nut and carry off. It is something the poem means – something that is gone when the poem goes and recovered only by returning to the poem’s words. And not only by returning to the poem’s words but by returning to them within the poem. If we alter them, if we change their order, though leaving their sense much as it is, if we speak them so that their movement changes, their meaning changes also.[3]

Meaning, if thought of as the substance of human experience, is made available and is interpreted through the form, and only through the form, which the poet creates. Form, according to this view, is meaning. It involves the selection and arrangement, the ordering and emphasis, without which the raw material of human experience would not be comprehensible. The meanings themselves, according to MacLeish, do not exist until they are composed. Thus, the poem is not a means of saying anything that could be said equally well another way. Its saying is the whole poem – the quality of the imagery, the feel of the rhythm, the dramatic force, and the ideas.

The concluding lines of “Ars Poetica”, therefore, do not suggest a refusal of meaning in poetry or a call for meaninglessness. Rather, they hold that a poem should deliver its own unique meaning, which is quite different from the meaning conveyed by other types of writing. On the other hand, these lines protest against any fixed meaning in poetry. A poem should not be written to have one standard meaning, but it should allow each reader an opportunity to individually interpret it. To state the matter a little differently, a poem should be made open to a wide range of varying interpretations, as different as its readers. This openness is a prerequisite for its existence. A poem, in this sense, cannot “be” if it has to “mean” nothing more than the ordinary, flat and unvaried meanings.  

But how can multiplicity of meaning be secured in a poem? This question leads back to the first lines of “Ars Poetica.” If a poem is to be so called at all, it should transcend the constraining boundaries of language, and be “mute,” “dumb,” “silent,” and “wordless.” The tendency towards silence constantly impels the text into a different form of utterance, and compels the reader to extract sounds, words and meanings from the deliberately silenced text. The process is one of exploration and struggle at the same time, and it involves both the poet and the reader. A poem comes into being as a result of the poet’s struggle with the silence of the world in order to force it to mean. This silence is thus turned to be a meaningful silence. The reader’s labour, on the other hand, is to struggle with the silence of the poem to make it answer and mean. 

It is silence, therefore, that endows a poem with its being, its essence, and its ability to generate unending interpretations.

NOTES