What is Truth in Poetry?
I asserted that if there were 100% truth in a poem, it isn't a poem. A fellow poet agreed and said 100% truth makes a memoir. Another poet made to clear that he completely disagreed with me.
I stand by my assertion, but I also stand by my critic's. You can't have it both ways, you may say. There's truth in that as well.
"Truth" is a powerful word, a word that can have so many different sides, so many different meanings behind it, and yet, they are all correct. Truth is a poly-sided die from a Dungeons and Dragons set.
What I meant by my statement is that poetic license has to play a part in the poem. Last year I wrote a long poem about three trips to the same city within a seven month period. But those trips also included three different sets of fellow travelers that went along with me. So in order to avoid a choppy and clunky poem, I combined all three trips into one and included only one traveler with me as my road map to writing the poem.
In terms of a "what happened" standpoint, to write the facts down as they occurred would have truly been more like memoir. I had to make the poem work, and because of poetic license at play, the poem was not 100% truthful.
Perhaps my critic saw "truth" as personal truth: emotion, context, feeling, passion, values, morals, every intangible creation that comes more from the mind and soul of the poet; truth is not "what happened."
And to this, I completely agree. I did not sell my poetic soul to the devil to write the poem; everything in there was 100% my personal truth. When I consider "truth" in my poetry, I include personal truth as well as "what really happened." Poetic license is by definition a lie, or if that is too harsh, an untruth, and therefore 100% truth doesn't exist in poetry.
But it isn't just poetic license of the "just the facts, ma'am" kind. Poetic license can and does also include removing oneself from one's personal truth, what matters to the poet, and by doing so, the poet is engaging in a conversation. A poem may take the devil's advocate side of an issue, a side the poet doesn't instinctively agree with, and so again, the poem does not contain 100% truth in it. The flip side of this, of course, is the poet's underlying values are still very present in the writing of a poem, and to this I also agree.
A panelist in a discussion on poetic truth at AWP's 2011 conference said, "Poets use research to disrupt the authoritative eye." And she was right, regardless of topic. And if history is written by the victor, as the saying goes, then historical truth is subjective, even when dealing with factual events. Doesn't the loser as poet view either facts or personal truth in history differently than the victor?
