Is honesty important in poetry

[Hamenaglar]

Fairly often poets say that they weren't honest when writing a poem. As if writing about something you didn't experience will create something inherently wrong.

My personal opinion is almost completely different. I think it becomes very hard to avoid writer's darlings when you try to pen something you feel very intensely. It can become very hard to detach yourself from such a piece.

I feel my best poems tend to be about stuff, I never really experienced/felt.

 

[Stew21]

Whether the poet experienced or didn't experience the events which inspired a poem doesn't really matter to me. Just like fiction, the writing has to feel honest. It has to speak a truth to the reader. Whether that's a truth the poet knows first hand, or not, Honesty is one of the things, that to me, the poet projects through the poem's narration and has everything to do with how it touches its audience. It doesn't have to be real, it just has to feel real.

My poetry rarely gets very personal in describing a true moment in my life, usually, the honesty of my poems is in how my subject meets its metaphor.

 

[kuwisdelu]

Yes, honesty is important.

Sharing a poem should make you feel naked and exposed.

Raw.

Fiction, too.

 

[KTC]

I often don't write about truths and lies. Therefore every poem I write is honesty.

 

[Debbie V]

All writing should express an honest impression of the world it's in.

 

[poetinahat]

I have no interest in writing confessional poetry, or laying bare my soul to strangers.* If it happens, fine and good luck. But mostly something that personal to the writer is of interest mostly to themselves, and little or no interest to me. Unless the poem is well written.

Now, one can argue that art requires personal motivation and investment to be good. If that's what we mean by honest, I could agree. But should art imitate life? Why?

Baring one's soul to the world, as a goal, is overrated, I think. We all have our own souls to contend with already, and the rest of the world has a lot on its plate. I don't care about feeling raw and exposed; sometimes I do it, but it's not the sole aim of poetry. It's hardly ever mine, and I don't think that precludes me from being a poet.

In fact, I think it can detract from the art: it's possible to be so preoccupied with Opening Up that one gets lazy with the craft. Meaning It is not sufficient. Poetry to me is not therapy; it's art.

On this point, I think I'm aligned with Hamenaglar and Trish. And with Kevin, in that truth isn't even a criterion.

I just want beauty and wit. Lie all you want, but be clever and charming. Don't get me wrong - I love insight and epiphany; one of my favourite poetic devices is the unexpected simile. But, when considering the quality of a poem, I have never asked, "is this honest?" or "is this true?"

The honesty I would care about is whether it's honestly as well written as you can make it. If poetry were a long litany of artless heart-spills, I'd give it up. There are more productive ways to be bored.

It might just be that, to me, being honest isn't a decision. Like "keepin' it real": how does one not? My honesty, to me, is a tautology.

Ah, never mind. This is what happens when you find out you've got tickets to see Morrissey. I'll be acting like a third-tier Wilde apostle until June.

*: But I am extremely fond of making friends and then soul-baring ad infinitum.

 

[jaus tail]

I think as humans we're all very selective in terms of being honest. Like if we were cheated by a salesman we'd write a story from it, write a poem from it, the world is going nowhere, selfish people, money vs hearts etc etc but if such an act occurred by us, we'd justify it and forget it.

I use my real life experiences to write stories n poems but don't expect the thoughts to put me on some pedestal just cause they are my honest thoughts.

 

[Ravioli]

Why should poetry be any more honest than any other form of creative writing?

I'm a little birdie
Of worship I am worthy
Look at my colorful wings
I have six legs, such fragile things

All lies. So what.

 

[Priene]

I'll always lie if it makes the poem better.

 

[CassandraW]

I dislike drippy craftless poetry that is nothing but a wail of agony. (Back in college, I edited a wee literary journal. It was fun, but the worst part was dealing with the really bad confessional pieces with no craft at all. I still remember one entitled "The Queen of Pain." I wasn't going to print pure slop, but I do hate rejecting things, especially if they still have fresh tear stains on them.)

That said, poems that are all craft and nothing more leave me cold. I hold my own knack for rhyme and meter (which come easily to me) cheap unless it does more -- I can write for pages in heroic couplets; so what? -- and I'll happily throw them aside or break them for meaning or a good image.

Of course they need not be 100% factual depictions of personal tragedies. But for me, it must touch a chord of emotion, sad, happy, or angry. Otherwise, I'll skim you once, yawn, and forget you the next minute, and all your iambic pentameter means nothing. And to touch a chord, it must at least feel honest.

Usually i find that I can express an emotion and touch a chord more effectively if I've felt the emotion myself at some time. The craft comes in when I try to write it so the reader feels it, too.

 

[Ambrosia]

Fairly often poets say that they weren't honest when writing a poem. As if writing about something you didn't experience will create something inherently wrong.

Have you asked those poets what they meant when they said they "weren't honest"? Because I am not sure you are interpreting the words correctly. It is possible to write something and not put your entire skills into the piece because _fill in the blank_. I would call that dishonest--taking the easy way out. I've done it before because I didn't want to put the effort into what I was working on to make it top notch. There were always reasons, but those reasons are invariably not the truth. Finding the truth of why you are not doing your best on a piece of writing is sometimes very hard and the excuses a writer gives is just that, excuses, because they don't want to go through effort and sometimes pain of figuring out why they are copping out. That's what I would say is being dishonest. Subject matter really has nothing to do with it.

My personal opinion is almost completely different. I think it becomes very hard to avoid writer's darlings when you try to pen something you feel very intensely. It can become very hard to detach yourself from such a piece.

So it is hard? So what? It's called working on a piece and editing. Sure cutting your "darlings" is hard. But it is part of the craft. I have had to remove whole sections of a poem before to get to the poem that was supposed to be. Brilliantly worded sections that just didn't fit. Sure, that is hard. But the end result is worth the pain. Not doing something because it is "very hard" seems a cop-out to me.

I feel my best poems tend to be about stuff, I never really experienced/felt.

"Write what you know."

 

[William Haskins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX5cJ2GqzFw

 

[CassandraW]

I have had to remove whole sections of a poem before to get to the poem that was supposed to be. Brilliantly worded sections that just didn't fit.

Make that whole pages for me. Boiling that stuff out and reducing the poem to its pure essence is the hard part, IMO. The "writer's darling" parts for me are the self-conscious "look how clever I am with craft" sections that don't do much else.

 

[Kylabelle]

I'll always lie if it makes the poem better.

Sure.

Honesty in regard to artistic creation is not equivalent to factual accuracy in any way.

Honesty in poetry is not equivalent to craftless emo-spew, at all.

Sure, poems that are at the pinnacle of craft glitter and sparkle with wit and cleverness, and I can gasp and point with the best of them. But if the poet only cared about winning the cleverness prize, I honestly don't give a fuck ever to read more of it, and I end up feeling that poem failed. Stillborn might describe it.

 

[CassandraW]

But if the poet only cared about winning the cleverness prize, I honestly don't give a fuck ever to read more of it, and I end up feeling that poem failed. Stillborn might describe it.

Yes.

 

[Xelebes]

I tell stories. What does honesty have to do with it?

 

[Stew21]

Sure.

Honesty in regard to artistic creation is not equivalent to factual accuracy in any way.

Honesty in poetry is not equivalent to craftless emo-spew, at all.

[snip]
But if the poet only cared about winning the cleverness prize, I honestly don't give a fuck ever to read more of it, and I end up feeling that poem failed. Stillborn might describe it.

Yes.

I agree with the first two sentences, but I do have an appreciation for craft beyond emotion. And I think that last snip is a bit harsh.
The poet's intention has something to do with it, I think.

Essentially, I can't graft my emotions onto the poet's intentions and base the poem's success or failure on my personal emotional register. At least, not entirely. How it touches the audience is important and it does weigh heavily, but I wouldn't call something a failure or stillborn because it didn't vibrate the right synapses in my brain.
Just my opinion.

 

[William Haskins]

this is a wonderful thread, by the way.

 

[Stew21]

I agree with that 100%.

 

[Kylabelle]

Harsh? Maybe. Honest, though.



I'm with Scarface.

 

[CassandraW]

To some extent, whether a poem succeeds or fails is individual. You can't reach everyone. Even if it's brilliant, not everyone will like it.

Whether or not a poem (or most fiction, for that matter) is a success for me depends pretty much entirely on whether it succeeded in grabbing me by the collar and pulling me into its window. It's not really about my own range of personal experience. Poems have often succeeded in grabbing me when describing things I've never come close to experiencing. YMMV, but that, to me, is a success. The poet has made me see what he's seeing, feel what he's feeling, hauled me straight into the middle of his story.

That feeling generally hits me first -- the "wow, yes I've been there", or the "oh, damn, I've never been there, but wow, I'm feeling that." Then it's fun to analyze the craft that brought me there. (Because it takes craft to do that -- a pure emo spew, however heartfelt, won't.) With a poem I love, I typically don't even get to really thinking about the craft until the third read or so.

 

[Stew21]

I feel that way about poetry too, how it makes me feel is a big part of what I like.
But critically speaking, just because I'm not a big fan of a poet doesn't mean I can't recognize the skill, when skill is present.

In fiction, for example, I'm not a big fan of Faulkner, but I appreciate Faulkner.

I just don't believe that "well I don't give a fuck about how this poem speaks to my emotions, therefore it's shit" is a very full picture of what makes something successful.

As for honesty, yes. I think it is important. But I can recognize the honesty in something I don't like. And I can appreciate that honesty in writing (not personal, autobiographical honesty, but that tap into ingenuity).

 

[Kylabelle]

Poems have often succeeded in grabbing me when describing things I've never come close to experiencing. YMMV, but that, to me, is a success. The poet has made me see what he's seeing, feel what he's feeling, hauled me straight into the middle of his story.

Exactly.

If it doesn't do that, I find it boring, really. If I know it's considered a good poem by others whose opinion I care about, I often look again and again to try to discover where the poetry went missing for me. Sometimes that bears fruit.

The example that comes to mind is a poem whose name and subject matter I have completely forgotten (I could probably find it if I look hard enough; I do remember the poet's name.) It was in such a tight form, it really was quite impressive. I don't know what this is called, but the way it worked was, there was the entire poem, and then if you pulled out the odd-numbered lines that itself was a complete poem, and also the even-numbered lines, again, were complete as a poem.

Really a tour de force, but I remember feeling almost tricked after I saw what he did there, because it was more a display of craft (outrageously masterful, granted) than it was effective, for me, as poetry.

 

[poetinahat]

So honesty = emotion? Correction: So honesty means an emotional or sympathetic reaction from the reader?

If a poem, despite its craft, doesn't engage the reader, I'd suggest it's not as well crafted as all that. Skill isn't just what you do; it's how you do it, and knowing when not to do any more. But I don't think I have to relate to a poem to be engaged by it. And to me, that's nothing to do with honesty.

We're all deciding for ourselves what honesty means in this context. Let's choose a poem, discuss whether it's honest, and why we think so.

 

[Priene]

So honesty = emotion? Correction: So honesty means an emotional or sympathetic reaction from the reader?

I use it in the sense of a poem relating events as if they actually happened. If I-the-narrator falls in love, the reader could infer that I-the-writer fell in love. If I did, that's honest. If I didn't, that dishonest (but none the worse for it, in my opinion).