Volume 22, Number 3, Fall 2005

Ars Poetica

Carl Leggo

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

at sixteen I first read
Archibald MacLeish’s Ars Poetica
but had no idea what he meant,
and there wasn’t much chance my English teacher
would reveal the mystery since she was preoccupied
with comma splices, I still don’t know what
MacLeish meant, even though I am now fifty,
and a poet who steadily seeks to know his art

and MacLeish’s last lines continue to befuddle, too:

A poem should not mean
But be

Perhaps

A poem should not be mean
But be a bee that pollinates
Grasses leaning in the light
Of the empty doorway
Where grief and love
Equal Maple Leaf bologna

how much weight can the alphabet bear?
even the unbearable lightness of being?

*
A poem is:

1. the frost on a winter window like a meadow of wildflowers or
2. a bucket of berries like a whisper in a crowded shopping mall or
3. the late sun in the winter valley like cranberry claret or
4. a tree afire in autumn’s light or
5. a shard of moon in winter’s night or
6. the sun awash in the sea in summer’s dusk or
7. a crocus, purple and bold, in spring snow or
8. a stone that holds the April sun or
9. a sparrow in a bare alder tree like a silent response to prayer or
10. the scent of rosemary lemon balm oregano or
11. a thousand snow geese startled from the slough with raucous laughter or
12. a passage through the frozen tundra of the heart or
13. twelve grain bread brushed with olive oil or
14. dark wine crushed at the back of the throat or
15. the warm catch of sixteen-year-old Lagavulin or
16. four blackbirds in the snow on the backyard fence or
17. wind blowing leaves, rain-washed, leaning into winter or
18. snow falling in the street light outside my lover’s window or

*
and Harold Bloom is mortified
because Stephen King has been awarded
the 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

and Laura Bush cancelled a visit by poets to the White House
when she learned some of them might criticize
American involvement in the Iraqi War

and David Solway thinks Al Purdy is a mediocre poet,
too popular, too accessible

and nobody reads poetry anymore,
takes poets seriously anymore,
especially not universities
where poets are barely tolerated,
and only because they have tenure

and I can’t get anybody to publish my poem
Does Wayne Gretzky Deliver Pizza?
about the Great One’s orgiastic consumerism,
and I suspect the editors are scared
of Wayne, or perhaps Wayne has bought
all the literary journals, too

but at least some of my favourite
Canadian contemporary poets
are opening up new perspectives
on ars poetica:

Michael Crummey writes about
bare buttocks like
two sad loaves in a pan

Lorna Crozier writes about
Patrick Lane’s arse
in lines too erotically charged
for my innocent poem

and if I were braver,
I would tell
the editors who don’t publish my poems and
the readers who don’t read my poems and
the reviewers who don’t review my poems and
the merchants who don’t sell my poems and
the poets who don’t like my poems

how in the expansive spaces
of my ars poetica,
I will drive my poems
like a mighty wind
that puffs with
an asthmatic’s urgency
across the empty page
of wild lonely imagination
with a bumper sticker:

if you’re not reading this,
you can kiss my poet’s arse