Poetry

We are working on a poetry unit in English, so naturally, we've been analyzing poems. Unfortunately, that's all we've been doing for the past two weeks- analyzing poems to death all period long. It's been incredibly boring, and my teacher vehemently shoots down anyone whose interpretation of the poem isn't textbook. It's been incredibly frustrating for me, who believes that poems are subjective and can be interpreted differently by everyone. When she gave us an assignment to pick a poem and analyze it, I was not excited. Until I found this poem.


Ars Poetica
by 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.



Yours,
Stephanie