Of all the classically trained and educated members of the ruling class of mid-twentieth America, Archibald MacLeish, for all his other distinctions, is the only one to collaborate with Bob Dylan on a Broadway musical (which Dylan pulled out of.)
This poem is the ultimate utility poem because it is made up of its own blueprint!
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.
Archibald MacLeish
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