Truth

In my poorly-informed understanding, poetry is an attempt to write truth. Truth on the subjects of poetry is not possible to write in steady prose, because the subjects of poetry are the things that happen within the mind -- things of motion and variability, sensual rather than factual meaning. One might say that a good novel has the same subjects; of course it is true, and a novel can be full of poetry. This is because poetry works by seeking epiphany -- bringing the writer's and reader's minds into a temporary, even fleeting, alignment. In fact it is a sharing of visions, of inhabiting other minds, made possible by the recognition by the reader of the truth in the words because of his or her own experience, imagined experience or sympathy.

As for the poet, he or she has to struggle to be truthful, to distil into arrangements of words and pauses a recognisable facsimile of a vision or insight. In this task, the poet is aided by the immense depth that all words have, the great range of their content accreted with time and usage.

Few things can beat the tremendous rush of grace that comes with a great line. I still thrill at the first few lines of Eliot's 1917 Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (after the Italian), even though I don't understand all of the poem. It's all about potential. And here is a line from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova who was persecuted by Stalin, quoted by the wonderful (and often poetic) Michael Dirda of the Washington Post's Book World. Shorn of its context, but presumably about her suffering.

'That was when the ones who smiled/Were the dead, glad to be at rest.'