More about Reality

Reading back through my previous posts on this blog I realise that I have only recently come to view poems as fiction. It seems that I used to assume that a confessional style poem was a representation of reality - or was it that I viewed it as such whilst I was reading it. Rather like the way I like to get immersed in a good film - while I am watching it I can become totally absorbed, for the time the film is on (especially in the cinema) the film is all that exists - it is my reality. This form of escapism can be equally applied to poems - I know in my logical mind that they are probably at least partially, if not fully fictitious but I believe in them totally while I am reading them.

Seeing things as they are

"Poetry allows us to see things as they are. It lets us see particulars being various. But, and this is its peculiarity, poetry lets us see things as they are anew, under a new aspect, transfigured, subject to a felt variation. The poet sings a song that is both beyond us yet ourselves. Things change when the poet sings them, but they are still our things: recognizable, common, low. We hear the poet sing and press back against the pressure of reality."

(Critchley, Michael, Things Merely Are, Abingdon: Routledge, 2005)