You cannot fact check poetry

Are clouds lonely?

Get a nephologist on the phone, stat! An atmospheric cleric with their head right up in ‘em, digging about in that barometric baggage like some kind of thermostatic therapist.

Where on the moisture spectrum does loneliness hail from? Is there a Cirrus sentience scale? Do they wonder as they wander? Do they question life choices? Do clouds miss their mothers, lament their empty schedules, or watch on as dreams evaporate, raining down sobs of solitude on the vale?

Is any of this documented?

Clouds have no eyes. They cannot see. And daffs don’t dance, not even sprightly. Perhaps, Mr. Wordsworth, one should consult a psychiatric professional before seeking to commit lies such as these to paper, let alone attempt to get them published?

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission at this time. Best of luck in the future.

Are all the plums eaten?

I must also confirm the veracity and sincerity of the apology and address the question of the fruit itself. Without the plums in front of me which you claim to have eaten—although there is no proof of this so I will require photographic evidence of the stone in the garbage—I cannot confirm their existence AT ALL.

Were they bona fide delicious, William? This submission does not specify if the plums in question were Greengages, Mirabelles, or even Elephant Hearts, which would change the overall flavor profile and help determine the truth of your allegation. Because if the plums were Umeboshi, game over.

And more to the point, to whom are you speaking? I will need their name and contact details to confirm this crime—this blatant plum theft—and if they really were saving them for breakfast as you have stated. Perhaps they were going to make a pie or some preserves with these plums until your absolute greediness stepped in? I would like to get these specifics on the record.

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission at this time. Best of luck in the future.

Does hope really have feathers?

Is hope a bird? I know there is a bird called the Hoopoe. Emily, did you mean to write “Hoopoe” is the thing with feathers”? I see the Hoopoe has very impressive feathers, so this is possibly a spelling mistake on your part. Please confirm.

The general structure of this piece seems to imply you are traveling, which also makes the Hoopoe a more plausible option since it is not an American bird and therefore not in my Sibley Guide to Birds. If so, I will need your full itinerary with ports of call and confirmed accommodations, plus any receipts you may have used to claim expenses, but until then…

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission at this time. Best of luck in the future.

Did all the clocks stop?

I saw no reports of this on the news so I will one-hundred percent need some kind of evidentiary support for this. One would assume that stopped clocks would’ve wreaked havoc upon on rail, air, and bus timetables. Travel chaos. THAT would’ve made the 6 o’clock news, surely?

Wait. If the clocks were stopped, they wouldn’t have known it was 6 o’clock and that it was time for the news broadcast. Confirmed!

One dog, correct? Can we clarify the kind of bone? “Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy neck bone” provides more context for the reader. And while I’m at it, can anyone confirm the dog was barking at all? Was there a noise complaint submitted to the landlord or local authorities by neighbors? I know you say the clocks were stopped, but a time of day for these events would also be helpful and a timestamp on an official disturbance of the peace document will establish the timeline of proceedings.

Now, the skywriting. That should be easy enough to verify. I just need a receipt showing the booking of the pilot and the flight manifest including flight path. I will also need to check to spelling and punctuation of “He Is Dead.” as written in the sky. You have used Title Case in this piece, but I will need to see a side-by-side image of the physical “in-sky” manifestation to confirm accuracy and compliance.

Snuffing out stars from the sky? Are you perhaps trying to say: ‘lights out!’ Mr. Auden? People appreciate directness. Be direct.

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission at this time. Best of luck in the future.

Is that old lady wearing purple yet? Does she hang out with the man who has the bottoms of his trousers rolled? Do we have visual confirmation on that?

Was it really evening all afternoon?

Were they really the best minds of your generation, Allen?

Multitudes? Walt. Do you really contain them? How can we quantify that? Is there a reference book that plots that space in the body where the multi-dimensional aspects and unverifiable components of a human lie? Did you note it in your diary? Please submit your evidentiary support immediately to this desk.

Until then, we regret to inform you.

You cannot fact check poetry.

Those gentle nights which we refuse. Our centers that do not hold. Poetry is the ethereal tremor of our barely constrained consciousness, wiggling and floating and seeking out the gaps in our floorboards through which to escape.

Poetry is truth without evidence. The expression of our wants and feelings and ponderings given form.

Poetry is faith. With poetry we accept, without question, that the human heart is more than an organ. That the thud we feel—the flutter, the jerk, the jolt—is not just blood moving through the vehicle of our body, but the orchestral stirrings of us, plucked and played as a song of life. A song everyone will interpret differently.

How do I love thee, poetry? Here’s a fact: There aren’t enough beads on my abacus.

Poem is perception.

Poem is person.

Poem is more than a word—or words—beginning with P.

We can scream through a stanza, we can yearn in a couplet, we can process the world using the metaphors of our minds. The streams of our dreams ooze out of us and go, babbling and frothing with joy, pain, and questions, always questions.

Poetry gives us a sense of ourselves. It is the expression of truth, not fact.

Love, loneliness, plums. When I am hungry, feed me a poem!

Poetry is a reflection upon our human pool. Our mountains rise, our clouds react, the fish of our memory jump and in this image we dip and swim and drown.

Fact. I don’t know everything but I do know this: we all will stop for death. But until then—until Death kindly stops for me—I know that there is nothing more pathetic than caution and so…

I will take that road, and lurk late, and drink the same water as the dinosaurs.

I will compare all manner of things to a summer’s day, and greet myself arriving at my own door, in my own mirror, to feast upon my life.

I will become the ocean and not get seasick every day.

Give your heart its voice, I say. Put pants upon your poesy and stride into this world.

Submission. Accepted.

*

Author’s note: There are references to 20 poems in this piece. How many did you get without looking? Check the footnotes1

This week’s amends…

“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life."

– David Lynch,

I am of the general opinion that you can never have too many David Lynch quotes in your saved quotes file.

Via Nitch

On Rotation: “WOR” by Django Django

A reminder that all songs featured in this newsletter over the years are added to the giant mega super playlist of magnificents and magnificence which you can access with an effortless depress of this button. 👇

Still the best episode of this podcast yet. They play with words and each other the WHOLE EPISODE. What is true, what is a lie, what is improv - who knows? Recommend you watch it to see how they play.

“Animal is driving.”

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