Plain Truth Poem by gershon hepner

Plain truth cannot be told by means of poetry
whose rhymes and rhythms ace it so that we can’t see,
truth trumped by it when lacking language that, prosaic,
to all hyperbole can be apotropaic.

And yet, prosaic truth is also inconclusive,
and fools us being both evasive and elusive;
without much money in the pot, when chips are down,
we realize we’re less its banker than its clown.

Inspired by an article by Colm Tóibín in the LRB, May 14,2009 (“Follow-the-leader”) on the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell:
In a letter to Lowell in 1955 Bishop tried to work out what the difference between prose and poetry might be for her, what it was that caused her to derive ‘a great satisfaction’ from the few stories she wrote, including ‘In the Village’. ‘It’s almost impossible not to tell the truth in poetry, I think, ’ she wrote, ‘but in prose it keeps eluding one in the funniest way.’ For most of her life, Bishop was interested in managing what eluded her with considerable care so that the truth, when it appeared, might become sharper and more precise, so that she could find the right tone and form for it. She was never sure.

5/20/09