What Has Truth Got to Do with It?

This is where passion and craft converge with the reason for writing. Presumably we write toward Truth. If we write toward publication then we sacrifice Truth. If we write toward workshops we sacrifice Truth. Passion derives from Truth as we see it at the time. Craft is the crucible into which we attempt to pour Truth. It is an inexhaustible job in that we never get it perfectly right. Part of the reason for this is that we as individuals change and our understanding gets wider and deeper over time. Thus, Truth itself changes. We can never digest the fruit of the tree of the knowledge.

Someone once asked me when I finished writing poems about Viet Nam. My answer was that I haven't. Each year I am a different man with increased experience and understanding about life and think and reflect differently upon all that passes through my mind. The analogy of being unable to bathe in the same stream twice holds profoundly here. This is much of the richness of poetry, of art. This is another reason that our poems, even the successful ones, even the published ones, may be considered failures the day after we write them. Even the act of writing changes the Truth we are trying to nail down. So, the point is that Truth is the backbone of our work, its reason to be. And Truth is a moving target that, in concert with the Heisenberg Principle, gets harder to nail down the closer we get to it.

Read this and the previous post Do the Work-- We've Seen Enough of the Spirit Side together.

So long for now.