novasilbaughstudioArs Poetica
There was a time when I pursued poetry with a passion, and I've often times thought about picking it up again. Somehow I feel like I've lost a bit of that fearless spirit I once had: The one that comes with the unabashed whimsy of youth. Perhaps I will find it another day.
This poem by Archibald Macleish speaks of the wordless poems seen throughout life; in the ordinary or beautiful things in life, on ordinary or beautiful days, in joys and in sadness, and in a ways a state of being as opposed to state of meaning. The ways in which writing a poem is more than words to be deciphered. It applies not only to the wordless ways a poem must say more, but to the wordless way an art piece must speak. Like a 1000 words or more not spoken in any given picture and between each line of verse.
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 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.
