Hi everyone!  We will have our summer break for 2 weeks and we will reopen on July 13, 2026.

This week we revisit the venerable tradition of the Ars Poetica, Latin for “the art of poetry.” Traditionally, an Ars Poetica is a poem about poetry itself: why we write, what poems do, how language works upon us, and what we hope our words might accomplish. From Horace to Archibald MacLeish and countless contemporary poets, writers have used the form to explore their relationship with the craft. An Ars Poetica often becomes a personal manifesto, a meditation, or a declaration of faith in poetry itself.

Here are some examples from this 2018 post:

Ars Poetica
By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

Adam’s Curse
By William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Source:  Poetry Foundation

Today, lets revisit this prompt.   Show us how your poetry comes to life. Use one or more of the following tools:

Imagery
What image best represents your writing process?

Perhaps poetry is a lantern carried through fog.
A river searching for its mouth.
A drawer full of unsent letters.
A butterfly emerging from a cracked cocoon.

Let the image do the talking.

Symbolism
What object, place, season, or creature symbolizes your relationship with poetry?

A key?
A compass?
A broken clock?
A migrating bird?

Allow the symbol to gather meaning as the poem unfolds.

Personalization
Give poetry a face, a voice, a body.

Is poetry your oldest friend?
A difficult teacher?
A child who refuses to sleep?
A grandmother stitching stories into a quilt?

Personify poetry and converse with it. Argue with it. Thank it. Question it.

The Prompt:   Write an Ars Poetica that reveals your writing process through imagery, symbolism, or personalization.

Some ideas to consider:

If your poems were a landscape, what would they look like?
If poetry arrived at your door, who or what would it be?
What object best captures the way you write?
What recurring symbol appears in your work and why?
What image returns whenever you think about creating poems?

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:

*Write a poem about Ars Poetica in response to the writing challenge.
*Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr. Linky below
and remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy.
*You will find links to other poets and more will join so please do check
back later in order to read their poems.
*Read and comment on other poets’ work–we all come here to have our poems read.
*Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.

Happy Summer Break!