If a Poem MEANS Something, It's Probably Not Very Good

This is one of the first poems I ever read about poetry. (The title is Latin for "The Art of Poetry.") I can't say I enjoy most of the subgenre of poetry criticism as told through a poem. (Although Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" is a wicked good read.)


But this is a poem that seemed to open up a new way to read things, where symbols don't "stand for" other things, metaphors aren't just clues to be unraveled, and every poem is ultimately about itself. After all, if you've got big, important things to say, you should be writing essays or stump speeches, not poems.


And this seems apropos in light of the Olympic Hockey finals: "For all the history of grief/An empty doorway and a maple leaf." (Yes, for some people that defeat still stings.)

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish

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.