Hi Sue,
It's interesting to read McLeish's piece again! I must admit when I
initially came across it I thought, "I'll read this more carefully later..."
Perhaps I've kept thinking that and, over the years, I've nibbled at it but
never felt able to take huge bites out of it.
I think I'm not sure about it on a sort of cultural level. I sort of feel
like a veggie being offered seasonal work on a turkey farm...
And the part you've highlighted is interesting. I don't think I'd ever read
it as you've highlighted it before! Thanks for the insight,
Bob


>From: Sue Scalf <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Equal to, not true
>Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 10:55:59 EDT
>
>If a poem as Macleish said is "Equal to, not true" it must be artifice.
>All
>art is.  How could it rein in chaos otherwise?  And that is what  is does.
>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.

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