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Horace (c. 18 BC)
Ars Poetica (also known as "The Art of Poetry", Epistula Ad Pisones, or Letters to Piso) was a treatise on poetics. It was first translated into English by Ben Jonson, Three quotes in particular are associated with the work:
- "in medias res", or "into the middle of things"; this describes a popular narrative technique that appears frequently in ancient epics and remains popular to this day
- "bonus dormitat Homerus" or "good Homer nods"; an indication that even the most skilled poet can make continuity errors
- "ut pictura poesis", or "As is painting so is poetry", by which Horace meant that poetry (in its widest sense, "imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation that was, in Horace's day, reserved for painting.
The latter two quotes occur back-to-back, near the end of the treatise.
The work is also key for its discussion of the principle of decorum (using appropriate vocabulary and diction in each style of writing).
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Archibald MacLeish (1926)
The best known poem by Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) took its title and subject from Horace's work. His poem "Ars Poetica" contains the line "A poem should not mean/but be", which was a classic statement of the modernist aesthetic. The original manuscript of the poem resides in the Library of Congress.
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.
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Czesław Miłosz (1961)
Nobel Prize winner Miłosz also wrote a poem with this title, though his poem has a question mark at the end of the title.
Modern Usage
The term "ars poetica" can refer to devices of metalanguage. The definition of "ars poetica" in the past decade extends to defining techniques of rhetoric, including but not limited to: writing about writing, singing about singing, thinking about thinking, etc. Stemming first from poetry on poetry, "ars poetica" is now widely used as a literary device to enhance imagery, understanding, or profundity.
Moreover, the technique of "ars poetica" was previously an attempt to capture the essence of poetry through poetry; the poet would write his poem, then step back, and his poem would become a way of knowing, of seeing, albeit through the senses, the emotions, and the imagination. In the modern century, a passage of writing or composition employing an "ars poetica" style is one that tries to capture the essence, the intrinsic value, of what it is expressing through. A song about a song, for example, would be an attempt to manifest the fleeting beauty of lyrics, notes, and dynamics.
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