Earlier I said I wasn’t going to write about myth but myth is related to truth. If George Orwell hadn’t said “myths which are believed in tend to become true” I would have. Truth is important but never let it become an obsession. There are more versions of truth than lies. That something might have actually happened is not the important truth. The emotional truth is what’s critical. With this said, every word I’ve written is true. I would swear on a blood-stained bible that each and every one of my poems happened as written.

I used to date a lovely young lawyer. We would often go SCUBA diving. In a poem I once wrote “Kathy … was futzing with her equipment.” She was angered by this line, claimed it never happened. (Imagine, a lawyer lecturing a poet on truth! That’s when I first began making notes on what will one day be a book on truth, a book that will become a textbook in some of the more prestigious law schools1.) I tried to explain that something didn’t actually have to happen for it to be true. What made the line true was she could have futzed with her SCUBA gear, and I knew her well enough to know that once we surfaced she was thinking of how she might readjust her equipment -- she thought of futzing! And a thought is as close as you need to come to action to make something true. Of course, she argued that the entire poem2 had little to do with reality. I disagreed and that her problem was only aware of a small slice of the world. Truth is much larger and includes what didn’t happen, but could have happened, and more importantly what you wanted to happen. Kathy believed that literary journals should have a girlfriend rebuttal column. She is now a staff attorney for the NOAA and I believe poetic justice is not within the scope of their concern so any legal action on this front is not likely.

Truth is a poetic device. Use is sparingly. Lies, on the other hand, are boring. Use them even more sparingly.

Poetry occupies a strange place in the minds of literary civilians. Is a book of poems fiction or non-fiction. If you’re making stuff up many would believe you’re writing a short story. People have a tendency to believe what’s in a poem. Though surrealism shows it’s hand and can’t get away with this. Confessional poetry runs into trouble with truth when it tries too hard to appear honest.

The difference between propaganda and poetry is not something I’m prepared to discuss at this point. It should suffice to say that they share goals. A tuning fork struck against a line of each would feel strangely familiar. That’s why intent is critical to understanding truth. Or, to be exact, intent is a more accurate stage for truth. When reality is at odds with even the most fundamental interpretation of emotional truth, reality always loses.

I write to discover truth. I write to remind myself of it. Everything you write in a poem will eventually happen to you. Write carefully.

When you write something honest with a fountain pen the ink dries faster. Pen a lie and the ink shines wet for hours. That’s probably the root of the word smear.

Writing a book on how to write a poem requires a different form of truth than writing a poem. And writing a book on how to write a book on how to write a poem demands an honesty altogether different from both of the previous. You can trust me.

1 I hired a marketing consultant, Bruce Silverman, to look into this possibility by doing focus groups with law school professors at Yale, University of Iowa, and Cardova Law at Yeshiva University.

2 This is that poem:

The sun set into a man’s hat, I saw it myself.
A large red ball into a black bowler, For an instant,
It looked like his hair was aflame. Then darkness.
I wondered if I had seen God. This wasn’t a dream.
I was walking my dog. It reminded me of the time
I was scuba diving off Anacap Island,
Surfaced after twenty-nine minutes at seventy feet.
Kathy came up next and was futzing with her equipment.
Her back to a boast anchored one hundred yards from shore.
A man stepped from the bow and casually walked on water to the island.
Kathy didn’t notice and I didn’t mention it.
This is just between you and me. I think
someone is trying to tell me something.
I can’t prove any of this but I’ve never lied to you before,
not even when I confessed I fell asleep smoking a cigar
in a favorite chair, open book on my lap, tobacco burning
with the lazy breath of sleep, ashes piling on the unread page.