Poetry: Truth and Lies
David Vincenti discusses the truth in poems:
Before Sharon Olds dropped the fourth wall and announced/admitted that much of the graphic detail in her poems is truthful to her own experience, she conducted an interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air in which Gross – an experienced and literate interviewer, stated quite clearly that the assumed or expected truthfulness of the experience was part of her enjoyment of Olds’ work. At last year’s Dodge festival, most of the poets – at all levels of experience – felt the need to include the introductions to their poems a map to the parts of it that were true. How often is the first question we face after we present something to a new audience or share a new work with a trusted reader “Wow, when did that happen?”
More often than I like, someone asks me when something happened to me in a poem. For instance, I may write about a place I’ve never been, and someone asks me when I was there since it was mentioned in a poem. However, we’d never expect a fiction writer to have visited every place they mention in a story.
Why do fiction writers get to have all the fun?
What do we need to do as poets to expand a reader’s notion of a poem and to cut that connection between poet and speaker? I have not done all of the things my speakers have done. David mentions that Sharon Olds tore down the fourth wall by announcing many of the things in her poems were true. She was hardly the first though. We could blame the Confessionals; that would give us something to do.
When my book comes out, I’m sure people out there will think all kinds of things about me based on what my speakers do. I dread that, but what’s to be done?