Abstract

This chapter discusses the notion of poetic truth. Is the form of truth poetry is apt to explore a kind of propositional or discursive truth? Is it a matter of a poem providing a ‘true representation’ of reality? The chapter sees poetry’s particular way with truth as more fundamental that any of these traditional conceptions of truth can allow. Poetry does not earn its claim to truth by mirroring an external world or by stating discrete, correct, ‘facts’ about it. The chapter argues that poetry is concerned with truth as a kind of revelation, an ‘unconcealing’ of aspects of existence that lie hidden from us in our everyday encounters with the world. Poetry transforms those aspects of reality it so presents, bestowing value upon them and infusing them with new forms of meaning. In this respect, in poetry we find a genuinely creative interest in truth.