The Poet

It seems to me there is an assumption that a poet always tells the truth.  As if the poet when he puts pen to paper puts aside all deceit and dissimulation.

How can that be?  If most poems are not written in an hour or three, they are written over days and weeks, a word here a line there.  Not to tell the truth but to make it rhyme to make it somehow better.

The truth is not better.  Truth knows neither rhyme or reason it simply is, and that too is something poets reach for but as they toy with this and play with that and fiddle with the ubiquitous comma, it seems to me that truth is the last thing they think of and often the first thing they cast aside.

Poetry is not about truth, or hardly ever, its about pretty lies, and honeyed stanzas.  Its about the vision of the writer and since when has that been or needed to be truthful.

Poetry it seems to me is about the vanity of the writer who but the vain would spend days agonising over the right word or phrase to say what the rest of us would use and discard in a second?

Ah but I do love poetry, not poets you understand, poetry,  for who could love someone who pours his energy, his emotions his very life into the words, and watches helpless as they end up wrapped in someones fish and chips.

And perhaps, just maybe you've gotta love a poet, just a little, for the poetry, the whimsy, the courage and the dare to be himself.