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Hmmm…Jack Gilbert says Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying…
Okay, okay, I hear all you guys out there sighing
but what he’s saying tis so very true
even if it makes you want to run him through and through.
Hold on, hold on, let me do some clarifying
after all, a lot of exaggeration [a polite word for lying]in fact a tremendous lot of exaggeration I think we can agree
goes into the making of most poetry-
after all we don’t really die of a broken heart
[it just feels that way but we’re not really falling apart]
and we don’t really drown in our tears
just like we don’t really hear the music of the spheres.
And if I say the wind is a large and growly bear
then I am most certainly lying my head off but with a certain flare
[that being another example of an absurd and gross fabrication].
But if I don’t lie then the wind becomes just an inert item on the weather station
that merely broadcasts that the wind is coming out of the south at 15 miles an hour.
My goodness, a fact like that just reaches out and grabs us by our
heartstrings and twirls us around the room in an ecstasy of glory.
and leaves us in a state of happiness with nary a hint of allegory.
Yes, perhaps poetry lies and lies and lies every time it opens its mouth wide.
[personification being one of the biggest lies often leaving readers mystified]Then why, Jack cries, why do you poets write lies to us when you know we know
that love is not a color and milady’s eye does not glow.
But, I reply, a list of factual truths makes me feel as lively as a dry creek-bed
So I might as well be lying in the street factually run-over dead.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~©2018 Susan Williams
He Says Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying
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