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In a message dated 12/12/00 7:04:27 PM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: > Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 06:42:55 +1100 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Writers Blocked > > >James Dickey > >had a good line that went somthing like: The poet's job isn't > >to tell the truth; the poet must make the truth. That being > >said, some poets, particularly those who lean naturally toward > >autobiographical telling, often resist this notion. > > How is that so? Autobiography would seem by its very nature to mitigate > against Truth. Memory being what it is. > > A A, I didn't want to open the discussion to What is autobiographical truth?...but I know more than a few poets who refuse to make poems out of anything other than from their own "lifestuff." (In a weak moment they might make a poem based on something told them by a trustworthy source.) But the idea of creating a poem ex nihilo (without an experiential base) is just not an option. They simply resist any fictive construct. A poem made from other than "this-is-my experience" (another word subject to a subjective filter) is "suspect" and to be avoided. As I've indicated, this is not my position. I suggested one treat material (poems) generated from inspiration, imagination, or one's experience, whether "passively" generated or "willed" into existence, all as equal. All to be looked at in the same cold hard light. No impulse or outcome being more "authentic" or "true" or "worthwhile" or "valuable"... Finnegan