Archibald MacLeish Should Quotations

If the poem can be improved by the author's explanations, it never should have been published.

A poem should not mean but be.

The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author. If the poem can be improved by it's author's explanations it never should have been published, and if the poem cannot be improved by its author's explanations the explanations are scarcely worth reading.

The perversion of the mind is only possible when those who should be heard in its defence are silent.

A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds.