Craft Notes
Ars Poetica
Because I’m doing a presentation today on Horace’s “Ars Poetica” I’ve been reading various other versions of the poem about poetry. Horace, of course, being that dastardly villain who has filled countless heads with the tedious idea that literature should not just delight but also educate, who reached back to Aristotle and pulled those cumbersome ideas about unity, clarity, decorum, and morality up through the ages for people like Sidney, Pope, and Sartre to latch onto and pass along. Horace, who opens his version of the “Ars Poetica” (circa 30-10 BCE) with a preemptive attack on Surrealism:
Suppose a painter to a human head
Should join a horse’s neck, and wildly spread
The various plumage of the feathered kind
O’er limbs of different beasts, absurdly joined;
Or if he gave to view a beauteous maid
Above the waist with every charm arrayed,
Should a foul fish her lower parts infold,
Would you not laugh such pictures to behold?
Such is the book, that like a sick man’s dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
Horace, who liked his shapes and extremes clearly separated.
Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of the other Ars Poeticas I’ve come across. It’s an interesting form that allows for a wide range of approaches.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.— from “Ars Poetica?” by Czeslaw Milosz
The text is (should be) that uninhibited person,
non-site): anachronic subject, adrift— from “Referencing Vast Leakage or temporary extrusion” by mIEKAL aND
My poems are usually brief
they resemble each other
they are anecdotal
they do not extend themselves
they make no great claims
they connect small things to other small things–from “Donald Hall Would Hate Me” by Mairéad Byrne
we in Ars fancy having … es lonx+eX.liness, poetic landXl+-ubber,
mau#d or m#u;xsca# …
lonx+eX.liness, poetic landaf ree di-#;do. woodbury -ci- …
iM8htgz:ars.withzhavan.zwyzsleep.Myze0:5zu6Mzq
in the form of art in Ars
maybe poetic – > Dead Semen …— from “What Is This Page?” by Bjørn Magnhildøen
The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. “If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world.” Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to diethey feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry–(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)– poetryis what he thought, but did not say.
— from “What He Thought” by Heather McHugh
A poem should not mean
But be.— from “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish
Tags: ars poetica
People like to say what poetry is and is not, very much. I’m pretty sure people like to say what poetry is and is not more than people like actual poetry. People who haven’t read poetry since they were in high school or have never read poetry at all like to say what poetry is and is not, I think.
That being said, I’m surprised the Ars Poetica isn’t more popular as a sort of “form” (although a very loose form, obviously, from the examples you’ve given) because it lets people write a poem and tell other people what poetry is and is not at the same time.
“Should a foul fish her lower parts infold” sounds kind of “realist” to me. Just saying.
People like to say what poetry is and is not, very much. I’m pretty sure people like to say what poetry is and is not more than people like actual poetry. People who haven’t read poetry since they were in high school or have never read poetry at all like to say what poetry is and is not, I think.
That being said, I’m surprised the Ars Poetica isn’t more popular as a sort of “form” (although a very loose form, obviously, from the examples you’ve given) because it lets people write a poem and tell other people what poetry is and is not at the same time.
“Should a foul fish her lower parts infold” sounds kind of “realist” to me. Just saying.
Love that mIEKEL aND quotation.
Why are so many writers portrayed as anorexic, unkempt skeletons like this young man? Oh wait, cause they are.
Skinny as critique is deep man.
Did I strike a bone?
Love that mIEKEL aND quotation.
Why are so many writers portrayed as anorexic, unkempt skeletons like this young man? Oh wait, cause they are.
Skinny as critique is deep man.
Did I strike a bone?
“Why I Am Not a Painter,” of course.
“Why I Am Not a Painter,” of course.
I just read this one by Miroslav Holub (trans. Stuart Friebert and Dana Habova):
Poem Technology
It is
a fuse,
which you set off
somewhere in the grass
or in a cave,
or in a third-rate saloon.
The flame darts
past stalks
and bewildered butterflies,
past startled stones
and drowsy mugs,
darts,
spreads a bit
or shrinks
as pain in a surplus finger,
hisses, sizzles,
stops
in a microscopic vertigo,
but at last,
at the very end,
it blasts,
a bang from a cannon,
crumbs of words fly
through the universe,
the walls of the day rumble
and although
the rock’s not cracked,
at least somebody says–
Shit, something happened.
What timing — I’m going to make my students write an ars poetica on Monday.
I’ve always liked this one by Paul Celan (the translation is by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh). It’s not explicitly marked as an ars poetica but it’s bad-ass nonetheless:
Upholster the word-hollows
with panther pelt,
enlarge them, furback and furforth,
senseback and senseforth,
give them vestibules, ventricles, valves,
furnish them with wilds, perietal,
and listen for the second,
every time their second, second
sound.
most poems are kinda ars poeticas.
I just read this one by Miroslav Holub (trans. Stuart Friebert and Dana Habova):
Poem Technology
It is
a fuse,
which you set off
somewhere in the grass
or in a cave,
or in a third-rate saloon.
The flame darts
past stalks
and bewildered butterflies,
past startled stones
and drowsy mugs,
darts,
spreads a bit
or shrinks
as pain in a surplus finger,
hisses, sizzles,
stops
in a microscopic vertigo,
but at last,
at the very end,
it blasts,
a bang from a cannon,
crumbs of words fly
through the universe,
the walls of the day rumble
and although
the rock’s not cracked,
at least somebody says–
Shit, something happened.
What timing — I’m going to make my students write an ars poetica on Monday.
I’ve always liked this one by Paul Celan (the translation is by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh). It’s not explicitly marked as an ars poetica but it’s bad-ass nonetheless:
Upholster the word-hollows
with panther pelt,
enlarge them, furback and furforth,
senseback and senseforth,
give them vestibules, ventricles, valves,
furnish them with wilds, perietal,
and listen for the second,
every time their second, second
sound.
most poems are kinda ars poeticas.
Chris, see what Janey Smith said, above. Horace was a man of the world, the sophisticated world of aristocratic Rome, & I’m not sure you’re right if you’re presenting him as unrelentingly dour. If I’ve got the story right, Ovid (who of course was all about the “beauteous” & animals in metamorphosis) perceived him as a rival & obstacle.
Other than that, good post on a rich subject. Among the ars poetica, hmm, how about Marianne Moore’s “Poetry?’ Come down in favor of play & the fantastic, I’d say.
Chris, see what Janey Smith said, above. Horace was a man of the world, the sophisticated world of aristocratic Rome, & I’m not sure you’re right if you’re presenting him as unrelentingly dour. If I’ve got the story right, Ovid (who of course was all about the “beauteous” & animals in metamorphosis) perceived him as a rival & obstacle.
Other than that, good post on a rich subject. Among the ars poetica, hmm, how about Marianne Moore’s “Poetry?’ Come down in favor of play & the fantastic, I’d say.