Musing on Truth and Lying

The task of the poet is to invent lies in the service of speaking truth, which is of course, deeply paradoxical. However, this is the fate, not just of poets, but of every human alive: to attempt to articulate that which cannot be fully known or articulated. 

Kenneth Koch understood this tendency of poets to "have the feeling of knowing things that may be unknowable" and as a consequence, to "make grand pronouncements." He wrote: 

Something close to lying is pretending to know more than one does know, or possibly could know, and/or pretending to have more power than one has or could possibly have. The impulse to so pretend may be highly emotional (Making Your Own Days 66).

Job caught a glimpse of the Infinite when God appeared to him in the whirlwind. He cried out, "I declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know"(NASB). His immediate response was to repent in dust and ashes, and ask God for instruction.

The character of Job may have repented of his words, but the author of the book did not. Confronted by an existential crisis, the author created a masterful series of poems exploring the causes of horrific, seemingly random events and our responses to them.

Thus we see that the poet's response is almost always to write another poem. That works for us as poets, perhaps because our work is tied to strong, genuine emotions and because we are trying to discover the truth, not obscure it.

In contrast, language used to deceive and manipulate others is the bread and butter of politicians, what George Orwell called "doublespeak" in 1984. Men and women addicted to power cannot perceive or speak truth; instead, they engineer photo ops and sound-bytes for the poisonous theater of the absurd.

Paul, in 1 Timothy, complained about men who wanted to be teachers of the law yet who "did not understand either what they were saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions" (NASB). Caught up in their own rhetoric, these men - like some modern teachers and politicians - had forgotten that their proper goal was teaching people to "love from a pure heart." Lying to themselves and others, they lost their way, and the result then (as now) was divisiveness and hatred.

Proverbs 15:33 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (NASB). Whatever your concept of God and the universe, it's good to begin by acknowledging that you are small and the world around you immense, astonishing, and too wonderful for any of us to fully categorize, define or explain. Kafka said it beautifully:

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet (Goodreads)

Thus we come to the writing of poetry, and the articulation of impossible truth.