Ars Poetica (idea)

To a great extent An Introduction to Poetry (Hubbell and Beaty) was used as a college text in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and is a composite handbook of prosody and anthology. It covers the subjects in a logical and methodical way by being straight forward and it included many poems from outside the canon. They use canon as a loose term for "the poems people usually include in anthologies". One of the first questions the handbook introduces is "What is poetry?" and quote several that are widely known:

• John Ruskin -- the presentment, in musical form, to the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.
• William Wordsworth -- the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.
• Mary Shelley -- the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
• Edgar Allan Poe -- The rhythmical creation of Beauty.
• Theodore Watts-Dunton-- the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language.
• Edwin Arlington Robinson -- poetry has two characteristics. One is that it is, after all, undefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable.
• Carl Sandburg -- the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge may have closest when he defined poetry by what is excluded from it. It is not science.

The poem dealing with this subject that almost all authors mention is in Ars Poetica. by Archibald MacLeish which was published in 1926 and claims that poetry is to be enjoyed for the same reasons that one enjoys nature -- simply because it is.

Comprised mainly of images -- simple word pictures -- it is intended to be read and understood at many levels by everyone, but not necessarily as the poet initially meant. The art is in the image the poet has drawn. Though the poet cannot predict the readers specific reactions or understandings, it then becomes the reader's responsibility to look at poetry more than read it. A fun thing to try is to rewrite the poem, changing at least one noun per line, deleting words like the, a, an, when, next, then, etc. It helps the reader to form a personal connection. By composing an eight line poem, beginning with A poem should be equal to: / Not true, I used images to suggest my personal interpretation of MacLeish’s poem.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true
For obsidian
rocks would remain unmoved
as glassine reflections

For all the cardinals
boundless in their flight of song

A poem should not mean
But be.

Try it you might be surprised that you too can discover 'the art of poetry.'

Sources:

Blair, Bob One of the first questions Hubbell and Beaty tackle is "what is ... :
www.geocities.com/~bblair/001113f.htm