seeing the thing...

Jack Gilbert

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.


          – from Monolithos, 1982

*

Another Gilbert piece that focuses on the poet’s problem – words that only approach the subject. A copy. A way in. The words aren’t the poem … instead, words are a shirt in the shape of a back.

Poetry, according to Gary Snyder, hides just beyond the edge of the light, and can’t really be seen. I believe him.