Archibald MacLeish: Ars Poetica

(http://shadowsonstone.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html)
no copyright infringement intended

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

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ars-poetica-2/)

(video by Omes8are8cute)

(Archibald MacLeish)

Archibald MacLeish: The End of the World

(http://wn.com/archibald_macleish?orderby=relevance&upload_time=all_time)
no copyright infringement intended

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-end-of-the-world/)

(video by Kentucky Country Day School)

(Archibald MacLeish)

Archibald MacLeish: An Eternity

(http://www.bachlund.org/An_Eternity.htm)
no copyright infringement intended

There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of
Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
White the peach bough.

Dying shall never be
Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
Death never was.

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-eternity/)

Rod Squad Salvation
Visual content taken from Lawrence of Arabia
(video by RSQmusic)

(Archibald MacLeish)

Archibald MacLeish

Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress
in the Thomas Jefferson Building
image: Carol M. Highsmith
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LOC_Main_Reading_Room_Highsmith.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

When I moved to DC area, I was told by a good friend of mine not to miss the Library of Congress. He repeated this advice each time we were talking by phone. Well, I never find time to do this, in seven years, as I have lived there. Each weekend I was choosing to do a different thing, either hiking (and there are in DC surroundings some great places for hiking), or strolling (and there are some great places to stroll, in DC or in the suburbs), or visiting the great museums there. And I was each weekend postponing the Library of Congress for the next time, till I left the region. It's a shame, I know, but now it's too late to fix it anymore.

Were I to visit the place, I would have learned about Archibald MacLeish sooner than I did. He was one of the most important Librarians of Congress in the history of that institution: among other achievements he was the one who started the rule of annual appointment of a US Poet Laureate.

So I encountered his name later, as I was reading once about the Lost Generation: those American writers who spent some formidable years in Paris in the 20's and then kept the city within their souls for the rest of their lives, like a moveable feast, as Hemingway greatly said. MacLeish has been one of them. I went on looking for more information about him, and I found a fecund poet, essayist, and playwright. I would like to spend some time here with a few fragments from his poems: it would mean having fine time.

• An Eternity
• The End of the World
• Ars Poetica 

(A Life in Books)