A Poem's Essence

• Right now, I am looking at Archibald Macleish's poem "Ars Poetica." My current claim on this poem is that, while most poems build towards the end lines/stanzas of a poem for its climax, the most important part of Macleish's "Ars Poetica" is contained in the center of the poem.

• I am going to begin by discussing the three parts of Macleish's poem. It is built into sections: This first section talks about silence in a poem and how they should not be too wordy. The middle section talks about the timelessness of a poem; how a poem should stop time for the reader/listener, even though time continues to pass. The last section talks about how poems should be metaphorical, how they should be escapes from pain, and how they should control emotions.

• I will then push into my claim a little more and focus on the middle section. When I looked at it, I noticed that it seems to be in the form of a chiasmus. A chiasmus is a poetic form that follows ABCDCBA. The middle section is the most important. I will discuss a little more about the chiasmus and how I view that section as Macleish telling us that it is the most important part of the essence of a poem.
• The middle section of the poem also has a lot of repetition and the climax in a story is more inclined to be somewhere in the middle, rather than at the end. I am still trying to work out the rest of my argument, but I think this is a start.