Poetry Matters: My War with Archibald MacLeish

In 1926, MacLeish published his Ars Poetica, one of the most famous poems in American literature. (The title means The Rules of Poetry.) It begins:

 A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb.

 This poem has been enthusiastically quoted ten million times, primarily in literature courses and writing workshops. Academics love it even though dull poems are almost guaranteed. Oh yes, mute and dumb are what poets should be dreaming about.

MacLeish created intellectual justification for what I call “The Plight Of Poetry,” namely, too much American poetry lacks passion and is boring. (Linked article is excellent for lit teachers.)

 I wondered for several years if I could create a worthy counter-attack. Something rambunctious and startling, as MacLeish is murmurous and sleepy. My salvo was published this week on Rat’s Ass Review (which I found by looking for websites that sounded rowdy and likely to publish adventurous work).

THE RULES OF POETRY

      –----for Archibald MacLeish

a poem should electrocute

and be hairy like a kiwi fruit

a poem should be

amorous and clamorous

like two starlets

seeking the same part

a poem should feel like

twelve-grit sandpaper

to the thumb

and emit an ominous hum

a poem may be untrue

and should conspire to undo you

a poem should be loud

and well endowed 

and none too proud,

like this one

 a poem should be Hitchcock squeals

and stiletto heels . . .

oh forget it.

TOES in a bottle

death in a purse

only fools make rules

for verse

 Even professors will agree, my poem is more fun. I've always been inspired by the aesthetic that Walt Whitman expressed in Song of Myself (1855):

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I believe this means we can do better than poems that are too polite and prissy, too carefully constructed as if they are clocks, too wrapped in Tiffany blue boxes. We want exuberance. 

We want what e.e. cummings wrote about in 1923:

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you

To show how long I have been engaged in this skirmish with MacLeish, here is my first try at counterattack from several decades ago, my Ars Poetica:

Oh to uncage words

as startling as birds

naked and silken

full of song and shriek

flung into the envious air

on a wonder of wings

to spin and soar and rise

dazzling our days 

with surprise

Point is, the debate over prescribed forms versus more novel expressions runs through all the arts; and it will be debated forever. The problem comes when one group pretends to have stated some final truth.

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