Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish Ars Poetica

This is a song that explores the views that the poet has about what constitutes a good verse form and what the ideal qualities are that a poem should strive for.

The statute ennoble of this poem is a Latin phrase and is borrowed from the classical Latin poet Horace. In the for the first time century A.D., Horace wrote an essay called Ars Poetica or The cheat of Poetry. In that treatise Horace advised poets (amongst other things) to be drawing and to make their poems lasting. By making use of the same title as Horace, it is clear that MacLeish wants to link the classical with the modern as a way of implying that the standards of good poems are timeless. In Ars Poetica, Archibald MacLeish accordingly proceeds to specify what he believes those timeless standards to be.

The poem is create verbally in three stanzas, with each stanza consisting of four couplets. In the first stanza, the first line of each couplet is used to discern and name a specific quality that MacLeish feels the ideal poem should possess, namely that it should be palpable, unstated, dumb, dumb and wordless. The rest of the couplet is then devoted to a simile with which the chosen attribute is compared.





MacLeish believes that a poem should be easily comprehended by the senses and the mind (be palpable) and so each simile is used as a heart of conveying a concrete sensory image. In coiffure to totaly appreciate what the poet means by palpable, mute, dumb, silent and wordless, the reader is asked to imagine these traits as they would relate to globed fruit… old medallions to the thumb…sleeve-worn stone…[and] the charge of birds.

In this way the poet compares the metaphysical qualities of the ideal poem to microscopical realities that can be experienced in the physical world. By using these uncomplicated images, MacLeish makes it easier for the reader to gain an understanding of the ideas he is trying to convey.

The images used in the first stanza also reward the poets idea that...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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