Anon.

(In response to a comment on the previous post.)

Thanks for that -- strange and valuable to hear an anonymous voice speaking wise words. That last post on 'truth' in poetry was in fact giving me sleepless nights, because of some of the very things you have said. In the first place, poetry does not sit entirely apart from other forms of what one might call art in seeking to capture and hold into stillness a fleeting state; and perhaps, since that state is subjective, yet can be shared, rather than truth in poetry one ought to speak of fidelity, or honesty or clarity; but these are all words that should be used as sparingly as possible.

It's also true that what one can share through poetry is one's vulnerability rather than some 'item' of truth. I think of it as a conversation between old friends, where words may be the medium, but one can nevertheless 'imagine' himself or herself into the mind or 'state' of the other. Not only is the poet seeking to expose himself, travelling well beyond his natural borders in search of absolution or confirmation in some sense, but so is the reader. One has to feel one's way through a poem, often even a fairly straightforward one, testing the ground every step of the way... So I think that somewhere in this exercise, some kind of truth is arrived at. Both writer and reader reveal something that is essentially themselves, and yet alike.

Every time I write a poem, usually motivated by some moment of clarity fitting to my state of mind and experience at the time, I find myself disappointed by my inability to represent the insight with fidelity. Because it seems to me that no matter how simple the realisation, it shatters into complexity the moment you prod it -- and how to gather all that into a few words? But the end-product, the poem as it stands when I give up on it, begins to become truthful by its very existence. And later I, even as author, have to feel my way through it for echoes of what brought those particular images to the top of the mind, just as perhaps a reader might. Are there poets who do not think visually?

Tangentially, I find that the great restraint that the effort for clarity and fidelity places on the words I use makes for fewer and shorter words and shorter lines and fewer lines altogether. So in that some kind of aesthetic is born. I just find it interesting upon reflection, and a mark of my poverty as a 'poet', that I lack the delicacy and staying power to spiral into a topic rather than, in panic, rush for the core of it in an attempt to make the capture.