Emily Dickison said, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Richard Hugo put it this way: “You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.” And Jack Gilbert calls poetry “a kind of lying” in this poem from Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982 (Graywolf Press, 1984).
POETRY IS A KIND OF LYING
Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.
Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
from saying even so much.
Degas said he didn’t paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had.
