Archibald MacLeish
The best known poem by Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), published in 1926, took its title and subject from Horace's work. His poem "Ars Poetica" contains the line "A poem should not mean/but be", which was a classic statement of the modernist aesthetic. The original manuscript of the poem is in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Read more about this topic: Ars Poetica
Famous quotes by archibald macleish:
“There with vast wings across the canceled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“The roots of the grass strain,
Tighten, the earth is rigid, waits—he is waiting—
And suddenly, and all at once, the rain!”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“What is more important in a library than anything else—than everything else—is the fact that it exists.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)
“It is the human season on this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.
I cry to you beyond upon his bitter air.”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)