The Case of the "Dead" Brother

Once I heard a poet read a poem about his brother who had died a tragic death. The audience was deeply moved. Afterward, some people came up and asked him more about his brother. “I don’t have a brother,” he said, somewhat airily. “Do you assume my poem is about some factual truth?” I was offended. Others were, too. WHY we were is the interesting question.When what we write appears to be truth, is it okay to lie? This is an issue that merits some looking into. And has been—most recently for me at a panel discussion by Rainier Writing Workshop faculty members Sherry Simpson, Mary Clearman Blew, Dinah Lenney, and Scott Nadelson, on “Why Genre Matters.” I didn’t have a chance to say anything in the open discussion, so I’ll take a crack at it now. If you want more background and pertinent references, you should read Dinah Lenney’s great blog at http://college.usc.edu/thegamut/2012/02/hurroo-hurroo/.The discussion, nay, the vehement arguments, about where written “truth” may give way to fiction certainly didn’t begin with what we call “creative nonfiction.” The truth is “messy, incoherent, aimless, boring, absurd,” wrote Janet Malcolm in The Crime of Sheila McGough, later comparing accurate narratives to a shapeless housecoat. “The truth does not make a good story; that’s why we have art.”Journalist John D’Agata obviously agreed, inventing a category he calls “essayist” rather than journalist, to describe his unfortunate blend of fact and fiction. And of course James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces “fooled” Oprah and lured over 3.5 million readers.I first think of Hawthorne’s Preface to The House of the Seven Gables, where he compares the “romance” (writing that may depict events that can’t actually happen) to the “novel” (writing that must remain true to what could happen).” Here’s Hawthorne:WHEN A WRITER calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former--while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart--has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation.Hawthorne’s thinking seems to underlie the current argument for messing with the truth: A nonfiction piece claims to have actually happened. Fiction can go anywhere. But both might—and sometimes do—claim the right of a “romance” –to go anywhere, based on the “truth of the human heart” rule.My thoughts. Hang with me here. I’m going somewhere with this:1. Humans began to make miraculous intellectual progress at the beginning of The Enlightenment. What happened was that we began to want to verify facts. The scientific method was born. For something to be “true,” it must be subjected to a test: it must hold true through trial after trial under equal conditions. It must be verifiable. Truth is true under all conditions, or it is not true. What we got from this, as a human race, is what I will call purchase. We got a foothold, someplace to stand so that we could see what the next level of thinking might be.2. The intellect is important not only for our intellectual life, but for our spiritual life. We have used it to build scaffolding which has enabled us to see and understand subtle spiritual truths.3. Caveat: There is no such thing as truth and when we look closely, we know it. All is a swirling mass. All is mystery. We invent what we call truth as a way to live within the swirling mass. And sure enough, “truth” does allow us to do that.4.I would like that poem to have been about a real brother. I would like when someone tells me something in a poem or an essay that claims to be fact, that it is fact. If I can trust that, a barrier is removed between me and the voice of the poem. I feel the poem on a more human level. It was you. It is your words.5. I see something of the “language” poets’ point of view in that dead-brother-poet’s response. Language poets ask me to be entranced, arrested, amused, intellectually stimulated, almost exclusively by the play of words on the page. That poet who wrote about his “brother” had us feeling sad, touched by his death. But the poem turned out to be only the poet’s game. If the poem had been ABOUT how one invents a brother, and why, and what that means to the speaker, that would be another thing.6. Tell me the truth or the world will fall apart. Tell me what you say is a story, or frame it so that I know it’s a story, and I’ll willingly suspend my disbelief. I’ll love doing that, and may be changed by it as much as if it were your true story. Deceive me and you’ve violated the basic human contract: we’ll find ourselves living in the hell fires of, for example, this particular political season.  

Art as Intercourse

“People limp to the shrine of St. Georgia and then fly away on the wings of the libido.” This is from The New Yorker, a review of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s early exhibitions.“Art is a means of intercourse. . . causing the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship with him who produced or is producing the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.” –Tolstoy.My friend, the marvelous writer and actor Dinah Lenney, and I are giving a talk about writing and art at our MFA program (Rainier Writing Workshop, in Tacoma) this August. Since we’re preparing for that, I’m turning back to my series of poems on O’Keeffe from my first book, Fishing With Blood (Purdue University Press, 1988). In these poems, I’m not only responding to her paintings, but incorporating her biography, which adds a certain other dimension. With characteristic modesty, I quote from a cover blurb on the book, from Dave Smith: “No one to my knowledge has written better about Georgia O’Keeffe, and many have tried.”I include here two poems from the series (the raciest one since I gave this blog a seductive title),  and the last one:O’Keeffe A New Yorker Visits Her Exhibition A man in a brown vestobserves jack-in-the-pulpits, paintedover and over, closer andcloser to the swelledspike, the slitof light. The trumpet flowerpillowed white toward its yawningshaft. The sunflower spreadlike a whore for the bees.Georgia sits bolt upright inthe corner, enduring hisplod and gawk. Her hands locktheir secrets aroundeach other. She turnsher flowers loose. If thisman had been the one who stuck their seedsinto the soil, they would go onwithout him, or dieof weeds, no matter, growingagain in wilder transformations. Hestands before Georgia’s monstrouscalla lilies, handsin his pockets. Perhaps he has almostdiscovered his smallimportance in this process, and hasbegun to look into his heart foranother point of view. She watchesthe symmetryof his hands as they turn andreturn almost against their will tothe same vaginal tease: a star, a bell-shaped cry, “Come in, come in!”  An Expert Explains Her WorkAnything pared to the boneneeds interpretation, sono one will be bored. You can’tsay look there, and there. Onlyhere, like a devotional.Once, Georgia O’Keeffe stolean immaculate black river-stonefrom a friend’s table with noexplanation, and sheis well known to have paintedthat same shape in a number ofexcuses: the single alligator pear,the sunflower’s eye,                                                        the obdurate moon,the hole in the pelvis bone. Howfar it is to eternity and howlittle we have to go on! Strippedof flesh, the pelvis boneis capable of flyingopen like camera lens.Then she was foreverpainting, like a curse, versionsof the door in the patio wallat Abiquiu. It took her tenyears to buy that house, thatdoor which had once beensold for two cows, a bushel ofcorn, and a serape. Still, it madeno apologies, a rectangulardoor in a patio wall,sharpened and scrupulous,a place on the wall tolet your eyesstop and collect their forces.If anything went in our out, youcould see, and put a stopto it, or be the only onewaiting, thus, the most beautiful.