The Art of Poetry

By analyzing “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish, I’ll gain a definition of a poem that can be used to analyze other piece of poetry. I start by looking at the layout of the poem. This poem is divided into three parts with four stanzas in each. This tells me that these sections could be read independently and interpreted separately from each other. The first section uses words relating to ‘quiet’ such as mute, dumb, silent, and wordless. The next part of these stanzas talks about something that doesn’t have meaning until we impose one on it. For example, “as old medallions to the thumb,” a medallion is, on its own, worthless. It is only a hunk of metal that has been engraved, that is, until he ‘put our thumb’ or assign meaning to it. From this I get that the reader should have to find their own meaning of a poem, and that the poem should not directly tell you what it means.

In the second section, the line ‘a poem should be motionless in time’ is repeated in the beginning and the end of the section. Since this line is repeated, I think that the author of the poem was trying to it the focus of this section. The word ‘motionless’ means to not move, or to remain stationary, while ‘in time’ implies that ‘time’ is changing. From this, motionless in this poem can also be seen to mean to stay the same, or to remain consistent throughout time. Rather than one meaning remaining consistent throughout time, I think that a meaning can be interpreted on the poem by readers through time. Simply put, a meaning should be able to be derived from a poem by a reader regardless of a time period its being read.

In the last section, the first stanza is ‘a poem should be equal to: but not true’. A poem should not have an ‘absolute’ meaning, but equal...

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...istence that is reality

Than suffer through the sound of my dreams crushing under the debilitating weight

Of adulthood and responsibility.

But still, burst goes my imaginings,

A single lonely longing sprout through the saline earth

Its lives and lives and long and blooms and blooms stunningly

To be seen and revered by all.

The anonymous poet of the poem “Lord Randal” had the most influence on my style. I liked how it start out sounding serious, but then, while still remaining serious takes on a humorous spin towards the end. I took this and wrote my poem so that it starts off sounding like one would expect a poem to, but then becomes more humorous as the story goes on.by all. I also used free verse, because not being restricted to the rules of how a certain type of poem is structures gives me more freedom to write the poem closer to the way that I want it to be.