Is Poetry
Fiction?
by
Gary Lehmann
Ever since 1956 when Robert Lowell published
Life Studies,
poets have had the idea that real poetry spills your guts on
the page revealing all your worst fears and most closely
held secrets. This confessional style has emotional impact,
and it is effective in some hands, but its prevalence in
American poetry today has obscured the underlying character
of poetry.
Real poetry is an account in fancy words of something real,
but it is a show, a rendition, a collaboration between what
really happened and the artistry required to write a good
poem.
Is poetry fiction? Yes, in a word, yes! Poetry is a story
written up with artistic affect in mind. It’s not true in
all the details, but it is true in all the important ways.
Poetry is true to life, not necessarily true to the facts of
the real events depicted.
Let me give an example. You once had a lover when you were
a teenager. The two of you got on quite well, but the word
love was
never used between you. There was some magnetic attraction,
but you were both afraid of crowning -–or cursing— the
relationship with a word that implied more than you were
ready to accept.
Then, one
night after a movie, you were saying goodbye at the bus stop
where you had to part company and the word slipped out. It
was a tender moment. There was a kiss, the first real one
between you, and the whole relationship was cast off into
another direction in an instant you had both worked to
forestall.
There, now
that’s a poetic moment, perfect grist for the poetic mill.
Only it didn’t happen that way. The incident at the bus
stop is when you both realized that something had changed.
That’s when the kiss occurred, but it wasn’t until a phone
call later that night that one of you uttered the word
love.
Do you tell
the truth or the real truth? That’s why poetry is fiction.
It has to tell the real truth, not the factual truth. It’s
under an obligation to make the edges fit together closer
than life actually fits in real time.
In reality, this relationship between truth and fact can get
rather complex. So, I want to illustrate my point with a
passage from T.S. Eliot’s
Sweeney Agonistes.
Sweeney is one of Eliot’s least read pieces of poetry. The
character Sweeney is a crude bruiser. He is talking with
his friends and to Doris. He is wooing her with some fancy
words. The poem doesn’t say where they are, but I envision
them in a course London pub in a rough part of town. In
telling his story, Sweeney references Paul Gauguin.
Everyone
knows the story of the well-educated French stockbroker,
Paul Gauguin who abandoned his family and the repressiveness
of Europe for the sexually permissive world of the Coral
Sea. He starts in painting and living with naked native
girls in Tahiti. His paintings explode with new-found
energy and purpose. Twelve years later, he dies .
Somehow, Sweeney is invoking this passionate paradise in his
pitch to Doris.
Under the bamboo
Bamboo bamboo
Under the bamboo tree
Two live as one
One live as two
Two live as three
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree
Where the breadfruit fall
And the penguin call
And the sound is the sound of
the sea
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Where Gauguin
maids
In banyan shades
Wear palmleaf drapery
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Tell me in what part of the
woods
Do you want to flirt with me?
Under the breadfruit, banyan,
palmleaf
Or under the bamboo tree?
Any old tree will do for me
Any old wood is just as good
Any old isle is just my style
Any fresh egg
Any fresh egg
And the sound of the coral
sea.
I want to skip forward in the poem a bit. Sweeney’s real
world bears no relationship to “palmleaf drapery.” Instead
he lives in a world that is dark and circumscribed by
brooding psychological tragedies waiting to happen. So it
is with some inner compass that Sweeney next tells Doris the
story of a girl “done in” by a man, perhaps based on a story
he read in the newspaper.
I knew a man once did a girl
in
Any man might do a girl in
Any man has to, needs to,
wants to
Once in a lifetime, do a girl
in.
Well he kept her there in a
bath
With a gallon of lysol in a
bath
...
This went on for a couple of
months
Nobody came
And nobody went
But he took in the milk and he
paid the rent.
...
What did he do! what did he
do?
That don’t apply.
Talk to live men about what
they do
He used to come and see me
sometimes
I’d give him a drink and cheer
him up
...
He didn’t know if he was alive
and the girl was dead
He didn’t know if the girl was
alive and he was dead
He didn’t know if they both
were alive or both were dead
If he was alive then the
milkman wasn’t and the rent collector wasn’t
And if they were alive then he
was dead.
There wasn’t any joint
There wasn’t any joint
For when you’re alone like he
was alone
You’re either or neither
I tell you again it don’t
apply
Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is
death
I gotta use words when I talk
to you
But if you understand or if
you don’t
That’s nothing to me and
nothing to you
We all gotta do what we gotta
do
We’re gona sit here and drink
this booze
We’re gona sit here and have a
tune
We’re gona stay and we’re gona
go
And somebody’s gotta pay the
rent
...
When you’re alone in the
middle of the night and you wake
in a sweat and a hell of a
fright
When you’re alone in the
middle of the bed and you wake
Like someone hit you on the
head
You’ve had a cream of a
nightmare dream and you’ve got the
Hoo-ha’s coming on
you
Hoo hoo hoo
You dreamt you waked up at
seven o’clock and it’s foggy and
It’s damp and it’s
dawn and it’s dark
And you wait for a knock and
the turning of a lock for you
know the hangman’s
waiting for you.
And perhaps you’re alive
And perhaps you’re dead
Hoo ha ha
Hoo ha ha
Hoo
Hoo
Hoo
Knock Knock Knock
Knock Knock Knock
Knock
Knock
At first blush, T.S.Eliot’s dive into a low-life London bar
bears no relationship whatever to his own life. It’s an act
of pure poetic fiction, and yet, maybe not.
Like Paul
Gauguin, Eliot was an ex-patriot. Gauguin was born in Paris
but lived the most important part of his years in the South
Seas. T.S.Eliot was an American who became a British
citizen. He was born in St. Louis, MO, was educated at
Milton Academy and Harvard University. He got a scholarship
to attend Merton College, Oxford, where he found himself an
outsider in the tight literary scene during First World
War.
Then he was
introduced to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a ditzy socialite, rich,
well-connected and very much the insider. She was vivacious
and lively. Sometimes, she was almost too lively. Her
enthusiasms bubbled over into hysteria verging on madness.
Still, Vivienne had everything Eliot needed to succeed as a
writer.
They were
married in 1915. She took his poetry on as a project to
focus her mind. He went about becoming one of the greatest
poets in the English language. Over the next twenty years,
doors were opened for him, publishing opportunities arose
from no where, invitations flowed like water, and
introductions, appointments, poetry readings and such
materialized.
But
Vivienne’s condition continued. It embarrassed her family
and imperiled Eliot’s standing amongst the intelligentsia.
In 1938, the decision was finally made to commit Vivienne to
a mental hospital north of London. It was a mutual decision
between Eliot and Vivienne’s family, but everyone had
lingering doubts. Locking her away seemed so drastic and
final.
Once she
was institutionalized, Eliot moved on and never looked
back. To all the world, he “did a girl in” and no one ever
knocked at the door, but the poetry tells the truth. Not
the facts, but the inner truth. It says loud and clear that
somewhere inside that well-combed exterior, Eliot grieved
for her or at least doubted himself. Their relationship was
rocky and uncertain, but there had once been a certain
amount of affection, and he never knew for sure if
committing her was the right thing to do. Had he used her
shamelessly?
Later on,
some of her family, who DID visit her from time to time,
began to feel that she was as sane as anyone and that her
condition was a kind of female hysteria that passed with
time, but she died in Northumberland House still judged by
society a crackpot. Eliot never once visited her.
Is poetry
fiction? Yes, in a word, yes!
In this
illustration, Eliot wrote from his heart but not about the
exact details of his break-up with Vivienne or her break
down. Still, Sweeney’s story manages to get it all in.
Emblematically, Eliot captured the feeling that he
experienced when he “did a girl in.” It’s as if Sweeney is
Eliot’s raw underbelly, his alter-ego, his non-Prufrock
self.
Even the
Gauguin passage seems to fit. When Gauguin abandoned his
family to go to Tahiti, he did it to advance his art, which
it did in a spectacular way. Gauguin ignored the toll his
personal decision took on his family. Despite the fact that
Vivienne catapulted his poetry to the forefront of British
verse, Eliot never visited his ailing and institutionalized
wife -- not even once.
Poetry is a
story written up with artistic affect in mind. It’s not
true in all the details, but it is true in all the important
ways. Poetry is true to life, not necessarily true to the
facts of the real events depicted. Is poetry fiction? Yes,
in a word, yes!
1731 words
Gary Lehmann Twice nominated for
the Pushcart Prize,
Gary Lehmann’s essays, poetry and short stories are widely
published – over 100 pieces per year.
The Span I will Cross
[Process Press, 2004]. Public
Lives and Private Secrets [Foothills Publishing,
2005]. His most recent book is
American Sponsored Torture
[FootHills Publishing, 2007].
Visit his website at
www.garylehmann.blogspot.com