Macliesh's Poetry Analysis

In Archibald MacLiesh’s poems, he explains the unique capabilities of art (specifically poetry). One of his poems demonstrates why poetry isn’t just words, but an unquantifiable experience. This is linked to another poem where he simultaneously demonstrates art in nature and the incapability to logically describe what art is. In this poem, “Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell”, he communicates that logic cannot apply to art – artistic parts of nature don’t easily apply to science. His personification of science is confused with art, and afraid of what she does not know. In “Ars Poetica”, MacLiesh shows why science doesn’t apply. Art is emotional, metaphysical, in a sense, and it is very difficult to describe its significance. However, …show more content…
MacLiesh begins explaining art’s emotional significance in “Ars Poetica”. He uses a lot of metaphoric language, signifying that the emotions communicated in poems cannot be blatantly explained in regular language – “a poem should be wordless” – but represented. The explanation of poetry is not made of words, but feelings, and MacLiesh’s comparisons define poetry by comparing it to things with which we associate these feelings. In the first stanza, he describes the physical feeling of poetry. “A poem should be palpable and mute/As a globed fruit” gives poetry significance without words. He says ‘mute’ to erase description by language or speaking, and instead give poetry physical form – ‘palpable’. MacLiesh uses ‘globed’ to immediately invoke a feeling of physicality. Fruit triggers many senses. Obviously sight, but also taste, smell, and touch. These are senses that are difficult to describe – languages have assigned words to them, like sweet, rough, or heavy, but it’s still difficult to describe a specific taste versus a similar one to someone who didn’t taste it themselves. He is communicating that poetry is the same way – if two people read the same poem, they might interpret it …show more content…
He speaks directly about it more than art; however, the main event in the poem is “Who dares to offer Her (science) the curled sea shell!” or science being confused about artistic parts of nature – he represents art with a sea shell. He communicates that this confusion is not because “She” thinks art has no purpose in the first line, “Science… cannot be bothered/Figuring what anything is for”. Instead, the reason is that “her religion is to tell”, and “Metaphysics she can leave to man”. Humans have something science never will – emotion. Science doesn’t understand art because art is made up of feelings and experiences which science cannot explain. MacLeish uses a religion of explaining to show how completely separate science is from anything other than hard fact. Religion is about the spirit, ambiguous morals from a rulebook never communicated, yet agreed upon, and what you are after your body is dead – none of which fits into logic or evidence. Art is incomprehensible to something without emotion, making it a unique experience for those who can feel the meaning and connect with the writer. This is the first half of a multifaceted statement about art and science’s relationship, the parts being confusion as seem here, and secondly,