Abstract
In poetry, there is probably no such thing as simple or unslanted truth. This is because, as John Gibson remarks, ‘[p]oetry does not earn its claim to truth by mirroring an external world or by stating discrete, correct, “facts” about it’ (2015: 14). Yet, notwithstanding poetry’s aversion to discrete ‘facts’, poets fairly often mention truth in their work and a well-known example is Emily Dickinson’s teasing and ambiguous statement, ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant —’ (1998: 1089). This is a good starting point for our discussion about the indirectness of poetic truth — and in the rest of her poem she has even more intriguing things to say on the subject:
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Axon: Creative Explorations |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |