An Ars Poetica. ..for me. . . And as I was doing some reading I came across this: In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the word "poetry" is often used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity." -- Helen Vendler, poetry critic Rather unsurprisingly, if you think about it, a number of poets have taken a break from mirroring reality, and turned their gaze inwards, whether upon other poets, other poems, the nature and role of the Poet, or, most reflexively, the nature and role of Poetry. Today's poem is a beautiful example. Titled Ars Poetica - 'the Art of Poetry'[1] - it attempts to prescribe the nature of poetry, and - in a move Hofstadter would have loved - does so in the form of a poem. Furthermore, it does not seek to sidestep the possible pitfalls and inconsistencies this approach leaves it open to - rather it meets them head on, using words like 'mute', 'dumb' and 'wordless' to set up a paradox culminating in the wonderful last stanza, 'a poem should not mean / but be'. En route, the main thread is woven through with several exquisite images, speaking to the reader even as it advocates silence, progressing even as it advocates motionlessness. And yet, at the end, it does resolve itself into a seamless, integrated whole, as perfectly self-contained as the globed fruit, or the timeless, frozen stillness of a winter's night. The reader is free to pick it apart, to tease meaning from the tapestry of contradictions and images. As for the poem, it simply is. discussion from another Ars Poetica. . .which I believe you will recognize. . .as you oft quote part of MacLeish's Ars Poetica. . .and your poem, My Lines, works in this way. . .yet differently, only as Norm could have written it. ~Ren~
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