20 December 28 Ars Poetica

 

28 Dec 20     Ars Poetica / The Art of Poetry - #1

. . . A poem should not mean

But be

Archibald MacLeish from Ars Poetica

NOTE: This post is longer than usual because I’m starting a brand-new category of the Monday Almanac. So, read the first few paragraphs to get a feel for what’s up. Then, if you like, scan the rest, see what serves you or piques your interest, and let go the rest. We don’t want to force your nose deeply into perfume of poetry. But maybe a sniff or two?

Although I have been writing poetry since I learned the alphabet and some words from Dick and Jane (and Spot – “See Spot. See Spot run!”), in the three years that I’ve been composing these Monday posts on poetry, I have almost never taken the liberty of attempting to humbly explain to others the art, purpose, and mystery of poetry. So, be forewarned; that’s just what I intend to do, intermittently over the coming months. As 2020 turns over a new leaf to 2021, if you will pardon the expression, today’s post introduces this series, and if I do my job, applications to writing in general.

What is the purpose of poetry? What makes a good poem? What does he mean when MacLeish says, “a poem should not mean / But be”? These are the kinds of questions we’ll explore in the coming year. No, not every week. I will still offer “guest poets,” segments of the epic poem I’m writing, The One, and when the muses are kind, new poems of my own. This new, fourth category of the Monday posts will provide opportunities to explore the immense range of poetry from its inherent art, to a modest look at its forms, to constructive critique, to the poets themselves. A challenge that defies an endpoint, and that leaves the poet in me with quaking knees.

“Fear not,” I encourage myself. “You have help!” Many have gone before me, and contemporary students and practitioners of the art give me the daring heart to attempt this for readers of these Monday offerings, however many or few that may be. Horace, an ancient Roman poet, and satirist will serve as an anchor for this series. (See bio at the end of the post after the usual “Explorations.”) Horace is arguably the first person to place a footprint on the path of inquiry into the art, purpose, and definition of poetry in his well-known essay, Ars Poetica (the art of poetry). This essay/letter/epistle will serve as the guide of our exploration. You may rightly ask, “Why choose someone from an ancient civilization?” Many reasons can be cited; however, the core reason is that a large number of poets and critics have chosen Ars Poetica as a means to do what I am respectfully attempting in this series: to understand and explain the skills, the forms, the attributes, the elegance, and the purpose of this creative form.

Initial Excerpt from Horace’s Ars Poetica

Note: A few numbered technical notes appear at the veeery bottom of this post

for those of you who want that sort of thing.

If a painter should wish to unite a horse's neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature], so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight? Believe, ye Pisos(1), the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man's dreams, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting anything." We are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in turn: but not to such a degree, that the tame should associate with the savage; nor that serpents should be coupled with birds, lambs with tigers.

In pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patchwork(2), that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress: but what is that to the purpose, if he, who is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform. [my emphasis, as this is the main point of these introductory paragraphs.]

Commentary

Horace writes Ars Poetica in the tone of an epistle (letter) in easy, conversational way. The poem has 476 lines and was written as a letter to a peer and friend, Lucius Piso, a Roman senator and consul and his two sons. Through the centuries, aspiring poets, in particular younger artists, have found about thirty maxims as guidance for their craft. The epistle (letter) is not intended to be a scholarly work or a theoretical thesis. It was composed for friends who already enjoyed poetic efforts.

The poem is written using dactylic hexameter (3)(4) and although written in poetic form in Latin, the work is today almost always written in prose due to the difficulty of translating ancient Latin poetry into English.

Horace approaches poetry from a practical standpoint—as a craft, or ars—rather than the theoretical approach of his predecessors, Aristotle, and the philosopher Plato. He also holds poets in high regard, as opposed, for instance, to Plato, who distrusts poets who try to represent reality in literature.(5) Socrates had an even harsher viewpoint. He said in the Republic that he would banish all poets to make a better society.

Throughout this excerpt from the initial paragraphs of Ars Poetica, Horace uses highly sensory images – just the kind of writing that attracts readers, but here he uses it to typify overblown, complex images that task the reader with simply “seeing” much less interpreting the point and beauty of the poem. He also uses one of the hardest working tools in the writing world: metaphor.(6)

The most important point that Horace makes in this segments is “. . . Be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.” You know what this means, especially in poetry. Many times, in an effort to sound elite and educated, or in an effort to explain the essence of the unexplainable, poets intentionally use mixed images (purple patchwork) that are hard to string together to yield an obvious meaning. Certainly, some excellent poets can leave their poems open-ended with several possible interpretations; however, they at least give clues and hint at what the interpretations could be. This is the first point Horace makes in Ars Poetica, The Art of Poetry.

POEM

Next, is an example of a poet who is trying to explain the art he practices. This is the first of many poems wherein the poet attempts to explain what poetry is.

A poem by Archibald MacLeish, is perhaps the best-known, modern era poem about what poetry should “be.” The poem tries to explain the art in the spirit of Horace. Here it is:

 

Ars Poetica

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.

 

Background

Can Poetry Matter? This is the title of an essay written by Dana Gioia in 1991 and expanded the next year into a book of the same name. I read this book with high interest in the mid-nineties. The original essay published in the Atlantic Monthly received more public interest than any other article in the history of the Atlantic. Gioia asks whether or not poetry has a place in today’s society and culture. This debate is intense and still argued at the present time. Until I read the book, I naively assumed that everyone valued poetry. Poetry was, and remains, my passion and my heart work.  But in my younger years I assumed everyone thought as I did about poetry – well, mostly. Fast forward to the present day. For decades now, I’ve known that most Americans have been exposed (and I do mean the shame of nakedness) to the uncomprehending, unsympathetic efforts of high school poetry teachers, which I was one for over ten years. Mea culpa. Forgive me my sins. I know better now – I think. Poetry needs to sneak in like a photographer’s birdie distracting a squirmy child. More to come in future posts.

Exploration 1: If you read the Wannaskan Almanac’s poetry-focused Monday posts, why do you do so? (I expect fewer than three answers.)

Exploration 2: Do you agree with A. MacLeish’s explanation of the components of the art of poetry?

Exploration 3: Does poetry matter? If so, why? If not, why not?

BIOGRAPHY - HORACE
Horace (65 -8 BCE) was, along with Virgil, the leading Roman poet in the time of Emperor Augustus. He is considered by classicists to be one of the greatest and most original of Latin lyric poets, appreciated for his technical mastery, his control and polish, and his mellow, civilized tone. As well as his lyric or love poetry, he wrote many biting satires and hymns. Ars Poetica is arguably his most famous and influential work.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (known as Horace in the English-speaking world) was the son of a freed slave who owned a small farm and also worked as a tax collector. He later moved to Rome, where his father was able to provide him with a good education, first in Rome and then in Athens, where he studied Greek and philosophy.

After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, Horace joined the army, serving under the generalship of Brutus and fighting as a staff officer in the Battle of Philippi. He returned to Italy in 39 BCE, when an amnesty was declared for those who had fought against the victorious Octavian (later to be called Augustus), only to find his father’s estate had been confiscated. Although Horace claimed to have been reduced to poverty, he nevertheless still had the means to purchase a profitable life-time appointment as a scribe and Treasury official, which allowed him to live comfortably and practice his poetic art.

The young Horace attracted the attention of Virgil, and he soon became a member of a literary circle that included Virgil and Lucius Varius Rufus. Through them, he became a close friend of Maecenas (himself a friend and confidant of Augustus), who became his patron and presented him with an estate in the Sabine Hills near fashionable Tibur. He had the temerity to refuse Augustus’ offer of a position as his personal secretary; however, he does not seem to have lost any favor with the Emperor for it. Horace is described as short and fat and prematurely grey.

He died in Rome in 8 BCE, at the age of 57, leaving his estate to the Emperor Augustus, in the absence of any heirs of his own. He was buried near the tomb of his friend and patron Maecenas.

Technical & Clarifying Notes:

1. Piso is the person’s name for whom the epistle was intended. The plural, “Pisos” refers to the father and his two sons. “Epistle” here is synonymous with letter.
2. In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself. ... When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work.
3. Forgive me, but for those of you with an analytical bent, a few technical aspects of Horace’s Ars Poetica: The poem was originally written in dactylic hexameter – but is almost always translated into prose due to the difficulty of transforming Latin into the English equivalent.
4. Dactylic hexameter: consists of lines made from six (hexa) feet, each foot containing either a long syllable followed by two short syllables (a dactyl: – ˇ ˇ) or two long syllables (a spondee: – –). The first four feet may either be dactyls or spondees. The fifth foot is normally (but not always) a dactyl.
5. This representation of reality in literature is called mimesis - a term used in philosophy and literary criticism. It describes the process of imitation or mimicry through which artists portray and interpret the world.
6. Metaphor - a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. For example, “raining cats and dogs,” “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” and “heart of gold.”