Ars Poetica

Reading Ars Poetica poems was really quite interesting in that I feel that I could relate to an extent with some of the poets and their reasons for writing and the struggles they encounter with writing. Frank O’Hara’s Why I Am Not A Poet was very interesting in how he addressed the issue of evolving writing. When beginning a poem, I often change topics half way through a poem, but I also sometimes find my poems slowly changing into slightly different or very different subjects. I really agreed with Archibald MacLeish’s Ars Poetica in that poems should “be” their subject or meaning. In other words, a poem should express a meaning, feeling, subject, or theme in ways other than just literal expression. I find that poetry, like William Carlos Williams’ This is Just To Stay really does that, as well as his poem about the red wagon. In the poem about the wagon, I really felt like I could see the wagon and the rain drops on the red paint. This being said, its quite interesting how Archibald MacLeish would directly address poetry as a subject in his poem. In some ways, it is a bit hypocritical that he attempts to describe poetry within poetry.