Ars Poetica Archibald MacLeish

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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.

! Poetry Marianne Moore ! I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all !
this fiddle.! Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one ! discovers in! it after all, a place for the genuine.! Hands that can grasp, eyes! that can dilate, hair that can rise! if it must, these things are important not because a! !

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because! they are! useful. When they become so derivative as to become ! unintelligible, ! the same thing may be said for all of us, that we! do not admire what! we cannot understand: the bat! holding on upside down or in quest of something to! ! eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf! under! a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that! feels a! flea, the base-! ball fan, the statistician--! nor is it valid! to discriminate against 'business documents and! ! school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must! make a distinction! however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the! result is not poetry,! nor till the poets among us can be! 'literalists of ! the imagination'--above! insolence and triviality and can present! ! for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall! we have! it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,! the raw material of poetry in! all its rawness and! that which is on the other hand! genuine, you are interested in poetry. "

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?Poetry Pablo Neruda

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And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth! had no way! with names,! my eyes were blind,! and something started in my soul,! fever or forgotten wings,! and I made my own way,! deciphering! that fire,! and I wrote the first faint line,! faint, without substance, pure! nonsense,! pure wisdom! of someone who knows nothing,! and suddenly I saw! the heavens! unfastened! and open,! planets,! palpitating plantations,! shadow perforated,! riddled! with arrows, fire and flowers,! the winding night, the universe. ! And I, infinitesimal being,! drunk with the great starry! void,! likeness, image of! mystery,! for myself a pure part of the abyss,! I wheeled with the stars,! my heart broke loose on the wind.

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman Wallace Stevens Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.! Take the moral law and make a nave of it! And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,! The conscience is converted into palms,! Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.! We agree in principle. That's clear. But take! The opposing law and make a peristyle,! And from the peristyle project a masque! Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,! Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,! Is equally converted into palms,! Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,! Madame, we are where we began. Allow,! Therefore, that in the planetary scene! Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,! Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,! Proud of such novelties of the sublime,! Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,! May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves! A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.! This will make widows wince. But fictive things! Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.