Summary
"Ars Poetica" is a manifesto for modernist poetry. The poem begins with the speaker declaring that a poem should be "mute" and silent," moving the reader with its impressions without trying to embody meaning. Such a natural poetic impression is compared to the effortlessness and organic movement of "the flight of birds." The following stanzas go on to add that a poem should be "motionless," and also embody the moon's movements, giving the reader a sense that the poem should move through someone's mind, but keep them still in space and time (or possibly transcend time). The third and last stanza states that a poem should "not mean, / But be," reiterating that a poem should exist and act upon the reader in a way that cannot necessarily be contrived or understood in the realm of cognition.
Analysis
The first four stanzas, evoke two main ideas. The first is the speaker's assertion that a poem should be “palpable,” or should be felt in a concrete way. This stance is one that implies a poem’s main work is to act upon the reader viscerally, as opposed to remaining abstract and conceptual. One could also argue that as a modernist manifesto, MacLeish believes the poem should literally become an object.
The second concept is that the speaker feels that a poem—like various phenomena in nature that he describes—should be “dumb,” “mute,” and “wordless.” It seems MacLeish is suggesting that the poem should not be overly cerebral or explanatory, nor should it lead the reader to focus on its words rather than its impressions and evocations. Ironically, by setting up this poem as a manifesto, MacLeish is doing the opposite of what he is calling for. And yet, the euphony of these first stanzas is indeed “palpable” and touches the reader beyond any sophisticated verbal interpretation.
The next stanza is composed of couplets with an extended moon simile, which expresses the paradox of what a good poem does. According to the speaker, a poem is “motionless in time,” like the moon’s steady and timeless presence, but is also quite mobile, leaving the mind “memory by memory.” Perhaps what MacLeish means here is that a poem should—in the same way the moon lightens branches at night, but also darkens the leaves when viewed behind them—enter awareness and skirt oblivion. One could even view this concept in a psychoanalytic sense, and argue that MacLeish hopes the poem will probe both conscious impressions as well as the dark, unconscious realm.
MacLeish’s inclusion of the same stanza again, “A poem should motionless in time / As the moon climbs,” re-emphasizes this anomaly of stillness and mobility, enlightenment and occlusion. The repetition also creates a kind of hypnotic lull that may enact the “dumb” poetic engagement MacLeish is referring to.
In the final section, MacLeish raises another set of criteria for the art of poetics, one being that he feels a poem should be "equal to" something, rather than true about a thing. He likely means that a poem should not be operating in any paradigm or within any lexicon that deals with right or wrong, truths or lies. Rather than being true or false—which implies that it is about something else—it should be "equal to", in other words, exist on the same plane as, other things. For example, rather than describing a globed fruit, it should be like one.
The next two stanzas suggest that a poem should leave images or traces of something much more immense and profound, as if all of the grief that has ever occurred only left “an empty doorway and a maple leaf,” or as if love that has passed only left behind some “leaning grass and two lights above the sea.” These lines seem to advocate for a poetics of minimalism, simplicity and enigma; one that is not comprehensive, but ephemeral. Obviously grief and love leave behind far more than the images in the poem, so perhaps MacLeish is pointing to the difficulty of accomplishing the poetic task of economy and restraint.
The last (and most famous) stanza underlines MacLeish’s essential creed, which is that a poem should not emit meaning for one to dissect, but rather, should just unfold, allowing the reader and the poem to encounter each other. In this formulation, the poem may act upon the reader, teaching him something, but not through verbal explanation or careful dissections of meaning. It is in this last stanza that MacLeish has put forth the crucial exploration of Modernism: the complex relationship between the conditions of existence (form), experience (emotion and sensation), and meaning. By the end of the poem, the reader is left with a final paradox: the poem has taught the reader a lesson and transmitted a meaning, but the meaning is precisely that poetry should "not mean" but simply "be." This can be taken as the fundamental paradox of modernism.
