telling lies

In Nin Andrews' Sleeping With Houdini*, a collection of prose poems, she wrote of an interview with a famous poet, where the poet confesses that he thinks of lies when he writes poems.

"Lie beautifully," she writes. "Lie convincingly. Lie. And then he did tell me his secret. The secret of the beautiful lie."

Writing poetry is a bit like telling lies. Even the confessional poems. We take the truth and bend it a bit, take poetic license, tell lies. It's the only way I can get away with it sometimes.

I've decided to try telling lies here, just for daily practice, for the beauty of art.

* This is my second review. I enjoyed writing the first so much, I thought I would give it another go.