Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying in  General   

Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.

Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
from saying even so much.

Degas said he didn't paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had.

By Jack Gilbert

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Other poems by Jack Gilbert:

• Divorce
• In Dispraise Of Poetry
• In Umbria
• Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying
• Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer
• Rain
• Recovering Amid The Farms
• Searching For Pittsburgh
• Tear It Down
• The Abnormal Is Not Courage
• The Great Fires