by Archibald MacLeish
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.
Words and the Intangible
"Why do we have to know this?" This is the question that every high school student wants to know when we start reading A Vindication of the Rights of Women or Macbeth. What they don't know is that question haunts me, their teacher, as well.
Why do we have to know about these works that were written hundreds of years ago? I have been struggling with this question for a while, because how can I help students love English if I cannot pinpoint exactly why I love it, and why my heart overflows with joy when I read perfectly paired words?
So many questions, and the answer kept escaping my grasp. But yesterday I caught it. The answer glowed in my palms like a lightning bug at dusk.
Literature, words, stories--these make the intangible tangible. Those things that we cannot grab or touch, those things that we know are real but cannot rub between our fingertips. These are the things that rest in our palms when we hold a book. The intangible becomes real through printed words because we can run our hands over the porcelain pages stained with inky letters.
Not only this, but authors use this thing called "imagery," the art of creating a real image in the reader's mind. In "Ars Poetica," the poem above, the author makes vivid images for the reader that symbolize universal feelings we often cannot express. My favorite is grief being linked to the emptiness of a doorway and a lone maple leaf. I also enjoy the images of love being like two blades of grass swaying together in the sunlight and wind or like two lighthouses communicating back and forth in the darkness of night.
Love and grief, among other intangible things, find substance in literature, or any form of art for that matter. But what really made my heart skip a beat was when I realized that human emotion was not the only intangible thing to be made tangible through words.
Another Word actually took on human flesh and lived among his people. Jesus Christ came to make God Almighty tangible, a God who His people had a very hard time understanding and knowing. So Jesus actually make Himself into something physical, something we could grasp and understand. Through the Word, we have been reconciled to God!
I am always amazed at the ways in which literature reflects and flows from our great God. My heart rejoices that He has come and been made like us so that we can know Him! Rejoice with me today!
