High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name (perhaps most recognized being Archibald MacLeish`s modernist entry, ending with the well-known couplet "A poem should not mean/But be"). Three of the most notable examples, including the work by Horace, are as follows.